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IMAGE 2010-11 ISSN: 2229-5658 Vol No: 11 ISSUE No: 4 25
Abstract
CHEMISTRY AND ONCOLOGY
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PHYTOCHEMISTRY IN CANCER TREATMENT
Mity Thambi, Doctorate Student, Calicut University.
Phytochemistry have been found to have interesting applications over and above their wellknown
medical uses. Most important among them is it is used as anticancer agent. Secondary
metabolites not only play a major role in the adaptation of plants to their environment but also
acting as anticancer, antibiotics, antifungal, antimicrobial agents. The separation, identification
and structure determination of biologically active compounds has been facilitated by continual
development of chromatographic and spectroscopic methods of analysis.
Introduction
It is belived that the birth of
ëëphytochemistryíí was the isolation of tartaric
acid from grapes in 1769 by the Swedish
chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, although
Marggraf had isolated sucrose from sugar beets
22 years earlier. The seeds (ëëarcanumíí) of
biological activity in medicinal plants to which
Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim
(ëëParacelsusíí) referred in the 15th century, we
now call molecules. It was the therapeutic
properties of these plants, disclosed by diverse
cultures over the millennia, which formed the
basis of health care the world over. In early part
of the 19th century, one of the challenges was to
study these active principles.[1] Plants are
stunning chemical factories, and
chemotaxonomy has provided some broad,
albeit substantially incomplete, assessments
regarding the distribution of various structural
classes of secondary metabolites, such as
alkaloids, quassinoids, flavonoids, betalains, etc.
Secondary metabolites also referred to as natural
products, are the products of metabolism not
essential for normal growth, development or
reproduction of an organism. These compounds
serve to meet secondary requirements of
producing organisms. Within a decade, there
were a number of dramatic advances in
analytical techniques including TLC and GC,
IR, 1 H NMR and MS that were powerful tools
for separation and structure determination. The
pharmaceutical industry was synthesizing and
marketing highly potent clinically effective
drugs, e.g. amphetamines, barbiturates,
sulphonamides and tranquillisers. The antibiotics
and reserpine were among the few novel clinical
drugs derived from natural sources and it was
confidently anticipated that all drugs, including
natural ones, would be produced synthetically.
Alkaloids in cancer treatment
Alkaloids comprise one of the major
groups of medicinally used plant constituents
and Indole and Biogenetically Related Alkaloids
was selected as the subject of a PSE meeting
held in 1979 (2). Several of these alkaloids were
in clinical use, including reserpine (the first
tranquilliser) and the dimeric indole alkaloids
vinblastine and vincristine (anticancer agents).
Other indole alkaloids, not in clinical use,
possessed potent pharmacological properties,
e.g. strychnine (a muscle contractor) and the
toxiferines (muscle relaxants). By 1986, the NCI
natural products programme had resulted in the
discovery of a number of highly active
anticancer compounds including taxol and
camptothecin discovered by Monroe Wall and
colleagues. During the past 50 years, plants have
provided several more clinically used drugs. The
Catharanthus alkaloids vinblastine and
vincristine, currently used for the treatment of
leukaemias, lymphomas and some solid tumors,
were introduced through the Eli Lilly Company
in the 1960s. The NCI collaborative research
programme into natural products with anticancer
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