Conservation Strategies of Anticancer Plants

2. Loss Of Biodiversity Of Anticancer Plants

Today's most potent cancer chemotherapeutics come from natural sources, as medications derived from wild plants are used to treat cancer. The National Cancer Institute states that throughout the past 25 years, at least 70% of newly approved medications in the US have been sourced from natural sources (Steenhuysen, 2007 and Pundalik et al., 2022). Every year, at least 30,000 lives are saved in the US by plant-derived anti-cancer medications like taxol, which was initially extracted from the Pacific yew (Daily, 1997). 11% of the world's important medications, according to the WHO, come from flowering plants. Currently, scientists are debating whether the loss of biodiversity poses a greater risk to humankind than climate change. Experts from all around the world claim that excessive utilization of wild anticancer plants is causing declines in biodiversity and may eventually reduce the availability of natural medicines. Before we realize it, we are eradicating the entire species and making them as extinct. The main factors contributing to the loss of biodiversity of these wild anti-cancer plants are human activities such as pollution, overuse of wild resources, invasive species introduction, altered land use and degradation from agriculture and urbanization.