What is it about?
Scientists are currently using plants with medicinal properties to treat a number of diseases, including cancer. One of the features of cancer is the uncontrollable growth of cancer cells. Therefore, an anticancer treatment must be able to stop this. Many anticancer drugs have already been identified from medicinal plants, but there are still many plants out there which have not been studied for their anticancer properties.
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Why is it important?
Microtubules - the "skeleton" of a cell - are important players in cell division. Therefore, it is our view that microtubules can be an important target for anticancer drugs. Our paper gives a summary on anticancer drugs that have been successfully isolated from medicinal plants and successfully used to treat cancer. We also discuss the potential of identifying new anticancer drugs from plants that work in the same way.
Perspectives
I have been working on microtubules since my PhD days where I was studying how they are able to steer the direction of cell division. I'm also very interested in cancer cell biology, so I was pleased to be able to merge the two areas together.
Dr Ihsan Nazurah Zulkipli
Universiti Brunei Darussalam
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Medicinal Plants: A Potential Source of Compounds for Targeting Cell Division, Drug Target Insights, June 2015, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.4137/dti.s24946.
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