Tumor microenvironment: a prospective target of natural alkaloids for cancer treatment

Cancer Cell International

Yuling Qiu¹  Yingying Shao²  Haiyang Yu²  Jia Lu²  Shiyue Zhou²  Yanming Luo²  Tao Wang²  Xiaomei Bao²  Shuangshuang Yin² 

[1] School of Pharmacy, Tianjin Medical University, 300070, Tianjin, China;Tianjin State Key Laboratory of Component-Based Chinese Medicine, Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, 301617, Tianjin, China;

关键词: Tumor microenvironment;    Tumor development;    Alkaloids;    Traditional Chinese Medicine;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12935-021-02085-6

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

Malignant tumor has become one of the major diseases that seriously endangers human health. Numerous studies have demonstrated that tumor microenvironment (TME) is closely associated with patient prognosis. Tumor growth and progression are strongly dependent on its surrounding tumor microenvironment, because the optimal conditions originated from stromal elements are required for cancer cell proliferation, invasion, metastasis and drug resistance. The tumor microenvironment is an environment rich in immune/inflammatory cells and accompanied by a continuous, gradient of hypoxia and pH. Overcoming immunosuppressive environment and boosting anti-tumor immunity may be the key to the prevention and treatment of cancer. Most traditional Chinese medicine have been proved to have good anti-tumor activity, and they have the advantages of better therapeutic effect and few side effects in the treatment of malignant tumors. An increasing number of studies are giving evidence that alkaloids extracted from traditional Chinese medicine possess a significant anticancer efficiency via regulating a variety of tumor-related genes, pathways and other mechanisms. This paper reviews the anti-tumor effect of alkaloids targeting tumor microenvironment, and further reveals its anti-tumor mechanism through the effects of alkaloids on different components in tumor microenvironment.

【 授权许可】

CC BY