Research progress in phytochemicals for increasing sensitivity of tumor cells to chemotherapies / 实用肿瘤学杂志

ABSTRACT

In recent years,the overall incidence of cancer and mortality have been on an upward trend,cancer becomes a public health problem that seriously endangers human health in the world. Currently,except for radiotherapy and surgery to cancer treatment,chemotherapy plays an important role in greatly improving the survival rate of cancer patients. However,most of chemothera-pies have drug-resistance and toxic effects on patients. In order to overcome these shortcomings,some natural phytochemicals have been used as chemosensitizers in chemotherapies. These natural phytochemicals not only increase the sensitivity of tumor cells to ther-apeutic drugs,but it also reduces their resistance and toxic effects on patients. Therefore,this review summarizes the sensitization of natural phytochemicals to target drug therapies and their possible mechanisms.