The various forms of cancer are undeniably a pandemic, and the rate at which some cancers are spreading worldwide quickly outpaces efforts to stop it. It is one of the most life-threatening problems of the 21st century. In 2018, there were 17 million new cases, with 9.6 million fatalities. More than 19 million new cancer cases will be diagnosed globally by 2020, and more than 10 million people will have died due to cancer. If current trends continue, there will be 27.5 million new cancer patients annually by 2040. Also, in many countries, often cancers remain undiagnosed and untreated, and thus, the real numbers are certainly higher.

The different types of cancer are caused by many factors, both intrinsic, like gene mutations, hormones, and the immune system and extrinsic. The latter includes factors like smoking, eating habits, radiation, and infectious organisms. Over the years, the number of drugs used to prevent or treat cancer has grown significantly. Patients may experience some unexpected side effects due to current treatment methods. Also, the rapid emergence of resistance and the high cost of treatment make them ineffective for the overall treatment of cancer. Even though there have been improvements in the development of synthetic anticancer drugs in the past few years, cancer patients have been waiting for bettermedicines that is easier to administer, costs less, has fewer side effects, and reduce the risk of developing resistance.

The use of herbal medical products and medicines derived from natural products has gained more attention in treating cancer due to their multiple-targeted sites, ease of access, greater chemo-sensitization, economy, less toxic effects, and lack of drug resistance. Some core anti-cancer medicines are derived from plant or fungal metabolites. However, the current medicines have several limitations in terms of their use, including their formulation, solubility, and half-life. Thus, new therapeutic strategies are required to overcome drug resistance, with greater efficacy and selectivity, and with fewer toxic effects. Globally, medicinal plants(MPs) have been essential parts of pharmacotherapy, also in treating cancer. MPs have contributed significantly to the advancement of cancer therapy. Also, some metabolites are thought to be essential inchemopreventive interventions. Therefore, it is crucial to develop pioneering strategies to improve cancer curestreatment and to develop strategies for better chemoprevention. Hence, medicinal plants remain a significant resource for developing novel anticancer treatments. A different and less well developed line of research is the search for preventive interventions reducing the cancer risks in populations
With a particular view on the advances in omics technologies and improved drug delivery systems, this Research Topic brings together recent research on the role of medicinal plants / fungi and their metabolites in the prevention and treatment of cancer (including both manuscripts covering original research and reviews). Also welcome are contributions which allow a better understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying these treatments across a variety of disciplinary topics are, the current state of knowledge on the study of plant-based anticancer agents, the discovery of novel bioactive metabolites, the evaluation of their anticancer activity in vitro and in vivo, the investigation of their pharmacological mechanisms of action, and the advances in research on semisynthetic derivatives with improved activity.

This Research Topic covers the following topics:

● Identification of anticancer agents in medicinal plants.
● Mechanism of action of herbal products and their lead metabolites on cancer.
● Assessing medicinal plant extracts and their metabolites for cancer preventive activity using established in vitro or in vivo models.
● Novel and improved formulation of herbal products for cancer treatment.
Reviews and meta-analyses of natural product effectiveness and their metabolites.
● Pharmacological and toxicological studies.
● Identifying the credible bioactive metabolites in ethnopharmacologically documented cancer medicines using system biology and metabolomic approaches if these studies are conducted in combination with pharmacological evaluations using an experimental (in vitro and in vivo) approach.

All the manuscripts submitted to the collection will need to fully comply with the Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version here). chemical anti-oxidant assays like the DPPH assay are of no pharmacological relevance, see also: http://cms.herbalgram.org/heg/volume15/01January/JournalsSkepticalofAssays.html. These are simply chemical tests / analytical tools and there is no evidence for therapeutic benefits on the basis of such chemical assays. The ethnopharmacological context must be spelled out clearly using primary sources. Purely in silico studies are not considered.

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