ABSTRACT
Cancer is one of the leading causes of morbidity and the second leading cause of mortality worldwide, accounting for about 8.2 million deaths in 2012 (Gulland, 2014). Although great advances have been made in cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment, the number of people dying of cancer is expected to increase up to 14.6 million in 2035. Limits of the current therapies include development of multidrug resistance, important side effects, and high cost, underscoring the unmet need for more efcacious and less toxic interventions. Plants have always represented an attractive source for drug discovery and development of cancer chemoprevention, and several examples do exist for natural products being included in current protocols to tackle the limits of chemotherapy. Accordingly, vincristine, vinblastine, colchicine, taxol, paclitaxel, and others are plant-derived anticancer drugs used in the clinic (Efferth et al., 2007; Mukherjee et al., 2001; Turrini et al., 2014).
