Betulinic Acid for Cancer Treatment and Prevention

Betulinic acid is a natural product with a range of biological effects, for example potent antitumor activity. This anticancer property is linked to its ability to induce apoptotic cell death in cancer cells by triggering the mitochondrial pathway of apoptosis. In contrast to the cytotoxicity of betulinic acid against a variety of cancer types, normal cells and tissue are relatively resistant to betulinic acid, pointing to a therapeutic window. Compounds that exert a direct action on mitochondria present promising experimental cancer therapeutics, since they may trigger cell death under circumstances in which standard chemotherapeutics fail. Thus, mitochondrion-targeted agents such as betulinic acid hold great promise as a novel therapeutic strategy in the treatment of human cancers.

• Publication year

  2008

• Venue

  International Journal of Molecular Sciences

• Publication date

  2008-06-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3390/ijms9061096PMID 19325847PMCID 2658785
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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