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Sesquiterpenes from Essential Oils with Promising Antitumor Properties

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Bioactive Essential Oils and Cancer

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Abstract

Cancer remains the leading cause of human mortality worldwide. Despite some decline in the mortality rates from the past two decades, cancer claims millions of deaths each year. Chemotherapy using natural products had proved its potential against cancer in recent times. Currently more than 60 % of Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs against different diseases are from either natural products or their synthetic derivatives. Sesquiterpenes are natural products which can be found in essential oils. These compounds have been found to have antitumor activities both in vitro and in vivo. A growing body of evidence suggests that these compounds could induce apoptosis, a non-pathological form of cell death, in different tumors. Many of these sesquiterpenes have also been shown to inhibit tumor progression by inhibiting the process of angiogenesis. Sesquiterpenes from essential oils have been shown to target various critical tumor-driving signaling pathways. Moreover, the most striking feature of sesquiterpenes is that some of these molecules can synergize the effect of current chemotherapeutic agents. Keeping in view the therapeutic potential of the sesquiterpenes from essential oils, more comprehensive per-clinical studies need to be performed in this direction.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cancer Pharmacology, CSIR-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine, Jammu, India

    Fayaz Malik & Suresh Kumar

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  1. Fayaz Malik
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  2. Suresh Kumar
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Correspondence to Fayaz Malik .

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  1. Federal University of Paraiba, João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil

    Damião Pergentino de Sousa

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Malik, F., Kumar, S. (2015). Sesquiterpenes from Essential Oils with Promising Antitumor Properties. In: de Sousa, D. (eds) Bioactive Essential Oils and Cancer. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19144-7_9

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