Greeks and Romans, one of the oldest and best-known records of civilized medicine was described in the Egyptian ââ¬ËEbers Papyrusââ¬â¢ (circa 1500 BCE), which
documented over 700 drugs, mostly of plant origin. Throughout different civilizations humans have relied on nature to accommodate
their basic needs, not the least of which are medicines for the treatment of a wide spectrum of diseases from coughs and colds to parasitic
infections and inflammation. A sobering statistic has recently shown that a person born in the
United States today has a 41% lifetime risk of being diagnosed with cancer. This alarming fact has urged the health care community to
identify effective methods of cancer prevention. Cancer cells exhibit deregulation in multiple cellular signaling pathways, yet all cancers share
a number of common hallmark capabilities, such as genetic instability, self-sufficiency in growth signals, insensitivity to anti-growth signals,
avoidance of apoptosis, unlimited replication, sustained angiogenesis,and tissue invasion and metastasis. Therefore, utilizing specific
agents to target single pathways is a tactic that frequently fails in cancer therapy. Genetic instability produces intra-tumoral heterogeneity that
enables adaptive resistance. Combination chemotherapy that targets a number of distinct molecular mechanisms is therefore preferable and
considered more promising, but the use of multiple agents is often constrained due to corresponding increases in toxicity.
Last date updated on September, 2024