Editorial: Targeting tumor EMT-related signaling by natural products

Natural products represent a good resource for antitumor agents and an excellent starting point for the synthesis of natural compound derivatives, useful for the treatment of various types of cancer (Giampietro et al., 2021; Naeem et al., 2022). These include natural products from plant, marine, animal etc. (Anwar et al., 2022).

In the last few years, many natural products and their derivatives have been explored as cytotoxic, antiproliferative or antioxidant agents and have also shown antitumor effects in preclinical and clinical research (Boretti, 2022). In comparison to synthetic medications, natural compounds have a higher amount of stiffness, which enhances protein cross-talk. This leads to better fitting into the protein receptor, which helps in easy protein activation for efficient signalling. They are the ideal candidates against cancer due to their diversity and adaptable structure complexity, a special natural property for biological activities such as that of artemisinin and vincristine. (Atanasov et al., 2021). This unique property of natural compounds had led the researchers to improve the knowledge to explore how they affect the tumour microenvironment and tumour signalling pathways.