Current Trends in Biotechnology and Pharmacy

The unmet treatment challenges such as intolerable adverse effects, massive immune suppression, and severe healthy tissue/organ toxicity with unaffordable treatment costs associated with conventional anticancer drug therapy have led to the exploration of complementary/alternative strategies to control the out bursting cases of cancer. In this context, plant-derived bioactive components have been increasingly popular as effective therapeutic options for the treatment of cancer. Phyto bioactive components (PBCs) derived from Piper betel have been shown to possess useful immune-modulatory, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory properties both in vitro and in vivo. At present, a large volume of pre-clinical studies have documented the beneficial effects of Piper betel-derived PBCs in various cancer therapy, either alone or in combination with established chemo drugs. The present review aims to provide a comprehensive research data on the therapeutic effectiveness of PBCs of Piper betel against various cancers to establish its druggability. The review would be useful to provide essential evidence-based support for furthering work on large scale formulation development as well as future clinical studies of Piper betel.