Mechanism of Action of Nimbolide in Cancer Prevention
Cancers are abnormal cell growth caused by genomic modification. So, any agent that has anti-cancer activity either protects genetic material from alterations or kills the genetically altered cancer cells. The active component nimbolide from neem acts on cancer cells and kill them by altering the several molecular pathways. The cytotoxicity of nimbolide has been widely studied over the last several years in a large variety of cancer cell lines [22]. It was reported recently that nimbolide inhibited cancer progression by influencing multiple mechanisms, including prevention of procarcinogen activation and oxidative DNA damage, upregulation of antioxidant and induction of apoptosis, inhibition of tumor cell proliferation, invasion, angiogenesis, and metastasis [19, 23, 24, 25, 26]. The potential mechanisms of cancer prevention by nimbolide are described below and summarized in Fig. 2.