Natural Products as a Promising Therapeutic Strategy to Target Cancer Stem Cells

Abstract

: Cancer is still a deadly disease, and its treatment desperately needs to be managed in a very sophisticated way through fast-developing novel strategies. Most of the cancer cases eventually develop into recurrencies, for which cancer stem cells (CSCs) are thought to be responsible. They are considered as a subpopulation of all cancer cells of tumor tissue with aberrant regulation of self-renewal, unbalanced proliferation, and cell death properties. Moreover, CSCs show a serious degree of resistance to chemotherapy or radiotherapy and immune surveillance as well. Therefore, new classes of drugs are rushing into the market each year, which makes the cost of therapy increase dramatically. Natural products are also becoming a new research area as a diverse chemical library to suppress CSCs. Some of the products even show promise in this regard. So, the near future could witness the introduction of natural products as a source of new chemotherapy modalities, which may result in the development of novel anticancer drugs. They could also be a reasonably-priced alternative to highly expensive current treatments. Nowadays, considering the effects of natural compounds on targeting surface markers, signaling pathways, apoptosis, and escape from immunosurveillance have been a highly intriguing area in preclinical and clinical research. In this review, we present scientific advances regarding their potential use in the inhibition of CSCs and the mechanisms by which they kill the CSCs.