MINI REVIEW article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Pharmacology of Anti-Cancer Drugs
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1610301
This article is part of the Research TopicExtracellular Vesicles in Cancer Research: A New Era for Therapeutic InterventionsView all 5 articles
The anticancer activity and mechanisms of She medicine herbs
Provisionally accepted
Yunxuan Miao1,2
Yisheng Chen1,3,4*Miao Wang1,3Qiaofen Lan3Runqiong Chen3Ruogu Chen5Jiajia Zhuang3Haojun Shi6Jianzhong Xiao3Chengshou Lin1*Jianhui Miao1,2*- 1Department of Neurosurgery, Ningde Municipal Hospital of Ningde Normal University, Ningde, China
- 2Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang, Henan Province, China
- 3Ningde Normal University, Ningde, China
- 4Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China
- 5College of Life Sciences, Longyan University, Longyan, Fujian Province, China
- 6Faculty of Medicine, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau, Macao, SAR China
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She Medicine, a traditional therapeutic system from China's She ethnic group, shows promise in cancer treatment. This paper provides a comprehensive review of She medicinal herbs, focusing on their anticancer activities and underlying mechanisms. Compared to widely studied traditional medicines (e.g., Traditional Chinese Medicine), She Medicine exhibits unique ethnopharmacological traits, such as localized plant usage and multi-target mechanisms involving apoptosis induction, immune modulation, and tumor microenvironment regulation. Key herbs like Pimpinella diversifolia and Melastoma dodecandrum showing significant anticancer potential due to their bioactive compounds such as flavonoids, quercetin, and gallic acid. For example, homoharringtonine (HT), a She-derived alkaloid, targets Smad3/TGF-β pathways in non-small cell lung cancer and synergizes with chemotherapy in leukemia treatment, as evidenced by preliminary clinical trials. However, challenges persist, including resource shortages, insufficient mechanistic studies, and a lack of quality control standards. Future research should integrate multi-omics and bioengineering approaches to standardize She Medicine and bridge its traditional use with modern therapies such as immune checkpoint inhibitors.Overall, She medicinal herbs hold great promise for cancer treatment and warrant further exploration to unlock their full potential in modern medicine.
Keywords: She Medicine, Anticancer herbs, Flavonoids, Quercetin, cancer research
Received: 11 Apr 2025; Accepted: 13 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Miao, Chen, Wang, Lan, Chen, Chen, Zhuang, Shi, Xiao, Lin and Miao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yisheng Chen, Ningde Normal University, Ningde, China
Chengshou Lin, Department of Neurosurgery, Ningde Municipal Hospital of Ningde Normal University, Ningde, China
Jianhui Miao, Department of Neurosurgery, Ningde Municipal Hospital of Ningde Normal University, Ningde, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.