Major anti-cancer natural compounds from three Zingiberaceae family genera, Zingiber, Curcuma and Alpinia; promising and their mechanism of action

It has been long standing attention to find out the most efficient anti-cancer drug. Despite the discovery of the many synthetic anti-cancer drugs, most of them is still lacking specificity to cancer. Therefore, there was a pressing need to discover novel and specific drugs to selectively target cancer cell. Hence. Many of researchers tended to investigate the natural sources to find out natural therapeutic agents with limited side but cancer specific. Many herbs in traditional medicine have demonstrated anticancer properties, and some may evolve into tumor-inhibiting agents by constraining the pathways implicated in cancer progression, repairing DNA, and prompting antioxidant effects. Despite their different chemical diversity, natural products are good reservoir of bioactive compounds with therapeutic impact. Between 1981 and 2019, 25% of newly approved anti-cancer drugs had natural product connections. In this review, we focused on the major compounds of three genera, Zingiber, Curcuma and Alpinia from the family Zingiberaceae, which is a large plant family in Southeast Asia with 52 genera because these plants are potential candidates for developing novel chemotherapeutics. We also concluded the reports which concluded the mechanistic pathways and the major compounds with anticancer properties based on the cancer type and the type of the study either in vitro or in vivo.