Breast cancer (BC) is the most prevalent malignancy in women. The main treatment for BC is surgery and chemotherapy. Generally, the chemotherapeutic drugs used for treatment cause numerous side effects. Substances derived from natural products have proven to exhibit anti-cancer effects without causing side effects. For instance, biochannin A found in cabbage and cauliflower reduced the growth of estrogen dependent MCF 7 cells. Another example is curcumin present in turmeric exhibits anti-proliferative and inhibitory effect against BC. The active compound of Nigella sativa is thymoquinone. The oil extracted from Nigella sativa reduced blood pressure. Nigella sativa exerts anti-pyritic, anti-inflammatory, and anti-microbial activity. Thymoquinone is found in seeds of Nigella sativa. Thymoquinone is a promising anti-neoplastic, anti-carcinogenic, anti-proliferative agent. In this chapter, the authors emphasize the anticancer potential of Nigella sativa and its derivatives and the mechanism of action against BC.
TopIntroduction
Breast cancer (BC) is the most prevalent malignancy in women (Wörmann et al., 2017). In males it occurs with low frequency (Abdelwahab Yousef, 2017). Worldwide, BC is a major cause of women's suffering and premature mortality. BC causes more cancer deaths in women in the United States than in any other place (Coughlin, 2019). According to estimates from WHO 2012, one in three women in Asia faces the possibility of BC in their lifetime (Donepudi et al., 2014). Indian women are affected at a possible rate as high as 25.8 per 100,000 women and 12.7 per 100,000 women mortalities (Malvia et al., 2017). Different profiles of hormone receptors may be expressed by breast cancers: ER (+)/PgR (+), ER (-)/PgR(-), ER(+)/PgR(-) and ER(-)/PgR(+) (Kunc et al., 2018). The expression of progesterone receptors (PR) along with the ER is evaluated as a prognostic factor (Lamb et al., 2019). Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a heterogeneous group of tumors composed of distinct BCs that are simply distinguished by the absence of estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and overexpression of gene receptor 2 human epidermal growth factor (Kumar et al., 2016).
The primary treatment for BC is surgery accompanied by chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Chemotherapeutic drugs used in the treatment of BC such as doxorubicin, docetaxel causes severe side effects which includes infertility, heart damage, leukemia. It is important to reduce the side effects as well as to decrease the cancer development (Shinden et al., 2020). Several studies shows that products derived from natural substance exhibits anticancer effects and decrease the aggressiveness of BC and inhibit cancer cell proliferation and regulate cancer related pathways. Natural product has the ability to provoke many physiological pathways which can suppress the effect of stubborn disease like cancer (Cragg et al., 2005). The phytochemicals present in the natural compounds aids in suppressing the adverse effect of conventional treatment (Somasundaram et al., 2002; Pandurangan and Mustafa, 2018; Suresh Kumar et al., 2019; Sivaprakasam et al., 2020).
Some of the natural products has already been reported to exhibit anticancer activity. 3,3'-Diindolylmethane (DIM) is a product of indole-3-carbinol acid condensation and is a natural compound found abundantly in broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage (Verhoeven et al.,1996). DIM has been reported to induce apoptosis by arresting G2/M cell cycle phase and sense gamma radiation and increase ROS production (Li et al., 2010). It was also enhanced the cyp19 expression and acts as aromatase inhibitor in MDAMB-231 and MCF-7 cells (Licznerska et al., 2016). Biochanin A obtained from red clover is an isoflavone that exhibits anticancer activity. It has been reported that Biochanin A reduced the growth of estrogen dependent MCF-7 cells at lower concentration (Yu et al., 2019). Curcumin a polyphenolic compound found in turmeric exerts anti-breast cancer activity by inducing apoptosis and apoptosis related genes. It exhibited its anti-proliferative effect by suppressing the expression of NF-κB in MDA MB-231 cells (Ghasemi et al., 2019). It's also reported that curcumin inhibits BC by blocking Wnt signaling pathway in MCF-7 cells. It also increases the effect of chemotherapeutic agent (Marquardt et al., 2015). Epigallocatechin is a phenolic catechin found in green tea. It induces apoptosis in ER negative MDA MB-468 and MDA MB-231 cells (Meeran et al., 2011).