Biotechnological approaches through in vitro tissue and cell cultures for the production of promising plant‐based anticancer drug: From medicinal plants to cancer chemotherapeutics

Cancer is the second major cause of deaths after cardiovascular disease throughout the world. In this respect, current cancer treatment strategies need to improve for early diagnosis and treatment. However, improved treatment approaches have been developed for reducing the rate of cancer-related death, significant challenges including poor pharmacokinetics and drug bioavailability, unexpected toxicity, lack of efficacy, and regulatory hurdles etc. remain in current chemotherapeutic strategies. Medicinal plants are valued for harboring many pharmacologically active secondary metabolites that are indispensable constituents of anticancer drugs used in metastatic malignancy. Although, plant occurring secondary metabolites have historically potential uses in drug developments, their use in clinical practice is not always possible because of their limited bioavailability and/or their toxicity. In fact, Food and Drug Administration data showed that 40% of the approved molecules are natural products, from which, 74% are used in cancer therapy that are viewed as more biologically friendly and effective, that is less toxic to normal cells. Some of the plant derived secondary metabolites such as vincristine, paclitaxel, docetaxel, and homoharringtonine already in clinical use, while others such as ingenol mebutate, curcumin, and betulinic acid in clinical trials as anticancer agents. Biotechnological interventions to produce potential chemotherapeutic drugs targeting cancer have expanded, particularly in recent years due to development of cell/tissue culture based platforms. In a pharmaceutical and clinical point of view, these platforms have become a mainstay for developing excellent compounds for the prediction of in vivo chemosensitivity or the screening of potential chemotherapeutic drugs. Furthermore, target validation experiments, tumor heterogeneity tests, drug combination and drug resistance assays are performed in in vitro cell-culture tumor models. As a consequence the intent of this review is to emphasize the importance of advantages of biotechnological approaches particularly cell and tissue cultures to produce of promising plant‐based cancer chemotherapeutics.