Natural products have been an invaluable and useful source of anticancer agents over the years. Several compounds have been synthesized from natural products by modifying their structures or by using naturally occurring compounds as building blocks in the synthesis of these compounds for various purposes in different fields, such as biology, medicine, and engineering. Multiple modern and costly treatments have been applied to combat cancer and limit its lethality, but the results are not significantly refreshing. Natural products, which are a significant source of new therapeutic drugs, are currently being investigated as potential cytotoxic agents and have shown a positive trend in preclinical research and have prompted numerous innovative strategies in order to combat cancer and expedite the clinical research. Natural products are becoming increasingly important for drug discovery due to their high molecular diversity and novel biofunctionality. Furthermore, natural products can provide superior efficacy and safety due to their unique molecular properties. The objective of the current review is to provide an overview of the emergence of natural products for the treatment and prevention of cancer, such as chemosensitizers, immunotherapeutics, combinatorial therapies with other anticancer drugs, novel formulations of natural products, and the molecular mechanisms underlying their anticancer properties.

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Acute lung injury (ALI) and its more severe form, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) as common life-threatening lung diseases with high mortality rates are mostly associated with acute and severe inflammation in lungs. With increasing in-depth studies of ALI/ARDS, significant breakthroughs have been made, however, there are still no effective pharmacological therapies for treatment of ALI/ARDS. Especially, the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) is ravaging the globe, and causes severe respiratory distress syndrome. Therefore, developing new drugs for therapy of ALI/ARDS is in great demand, which might also be helpful for treatment of COVID-19. Natural compounds have always inspired drug development, and numerous natural products have shown potential therapeutic effects on ALI/ARDS. Therefore, this review focuses on the potential therapeutic effects of natural compounds on ALI and the underlying mechanisms. Overall, the review discusses 159 compounds and summarizes more than 400 references to present the protective effects of natural compounds against ALI and the underlying mechanism.

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The research field of systems biology has greatly advanced and, as a result, the concept of network pharmacology has been developed. This advancement, in turn, has shifted the paradigm from a "one-target, one-drug" mode to a "network-target, multiple-component-therapeutics" mode. Network pharmacology is more effective for establishing a "compound-protein/gene-disease" network and revealing the regulation principles of small molecules in a high-throughput manner. This approach makes it very powerful for the analysis of drug combinations, especially Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) preparations. In this work, we first summarized the databases and tools currently used for TCM research. Second, we focused on several representative applications of network pharmacology for TCM research, including studies on TCM compatibility, TCM target prediction, and TCM network toxicology research. Third, we compared the general statistics of several current TCM databases and evaluated and compared the search results of these databases based on 10 famous herbs. In summary, network pharmacology is a rational approach for TCM studies, and with the development of TCM research, powerful and comprehensive TCM databases have emerged but need further improvements. Additionally, given that several diseases could be treated by TCMs, with the mediation of gut microbiota, future studies should focus on both the microbiome and TCMs to better understand and treat microbiome-related diseases.

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Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is an emerging infectious disease caused by a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV). SARS-CoV spike (S) protein, a type I membrane-bound protein, is essential for the viral attachment to the host cell receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). By screening 312 controlled Chinese medicinal herbs supervised by Committee on Chinese Medicine and Pharmacy at Taiwan, we identified that three widely used Chinese medicinal herbs of the family Polygonaceae inhibited the interaction of SARS-CoV S protein and ACE2. The IC(50) values for Radix et Rhizoma Rhei (the root tubers of Rheum officinale Baill.), Radix Polygoni multiflori (the root tubers of Polygonum multiflorum Thunb.), and Caulis Polygoni multiflori (the vines of P. multiflorum Thunb.) ranged from 1 to 10 microg/ml. Emodin, an anthraquinone compound derived from genus Rheum and Polygonum, significantly blocked the S protein and ACE2 interaction in a dose-dependent manner. It also inhibited the infectivity of S protein-pseudotyped retrovirus to Vero E6 cells. These findings suggested that emodin may be considered as a potential lead therapeutic agent in the treatment of SARS.

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Cancer prevention and treatment using traditional Chinese medicines have attracted increasing interest. This study characterizes antioxidant activity and phenolic compounds of traditional Chinese medicinal plants associated with anticancer, comprising 112 species from 50 plant families. The improved ABTS(*+) method was used to systematically assess the total antioxidant capacity (Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity, TEAC) of the medicinal extracts. The TEAC values and total phenolic content for methanolic extracts of herbs ranged from 46.7 to 17,323 micromol Trolox equivalent/100 g dry weight (DW), and from 0.22 to 50.3 g of gallic acid equivalent/100 g DW, respectively. A positive, significant linear relationship between antioxidant activity and total phenolic content (all R(2) values>/=0.95) showed that phenolic compounds were the dominant antioxidant components in the tested medicinal herbs. Major types of phenolic compounds from most of the tested herbs were preliminarily identified and analyzed, and mainly included phenolic acids, flavonoids, tannins, coumarins, lignans, quinones, stilbenes, and curcuminoids. These medicinal herbs exhibited far stronger antioxidant activity and contained significantly higher levels of phenolics than common vegetables and fruits. Traditional Chinese medicinal plants associated with anticancer might be potential sources of potent natural antioxidants and beneficial chemopreventive agents.

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