Natural Products as a Promising Therapeutic Strategy to Target Cancer Stem Cells

Abstract

Cancer remains a deadly disease, and its treatment desperately needs to be managed through novel, rapidly advancing strategies. Most cancer cases eventually develop into recurrences, for which cancer stem cells (CSCs) are thought to be responsible. These cells are considered a subpopulation of all tumor cancer cells, with aberrant regulation of self-renewal, unbalanced proliferation, and cell death properties. CSCs show a marked degree of resistance to chemotherapy or radiotherapy and immune surveillance. To combat CSCs, new drugs are flooding the market each year, increasing the cost of therapy dramatically. Natural products are becoming a new research area, presenting a diverse chemical library to suppress CSCs and some natural products show great promise in this regard. In the near future, the introduction of natural products as a source of new chemotherapy modalities may result in the development of novel anticancer drugs that could be reasonably-priced alternatives to expensive current treatments. Lately preclinical and clinical research has focused on natural compounds' effects on targeting surface markers, signaling pathways, apoptosis, and escape from immunosurveillance. In this review, we present research on the mechanisms through which natural compounds kill CSCs and the potential use of natural compounds in the inhibition of CSCs.