REVIEW article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Pharmacology of Anti-Cancer Drugs
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1649472
Targeting Digestive System Cancers with Isoliquiritigenin: A Comprehensive Review of Antitumor Mechanisms
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jinan, China
- 2The Second Hospital of Shandong University, Jinan, China
- 3Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine Affiliated Hospital, Jinan, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Digestive system malignancies, including gastric, colorectal, and liver cancers, account for a substantial proportion of global cancer morbidity and mortality. Despite advancements in conventional treatment strategies such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgical resection, and immunotherapy, clinical outcomes remain unsatisfactory due to limited therapeutic efficacy, severe side effects, and poor patient prognosis. Therefore, the development of more effective and less toxic treatment options is urgently needed. Isoliquiritigenin (ISL), a natural chalcone-type flavonoid primarily extracted from licorice (Glycyrrhiza spp.), has attracted increasing attention for its broad pharmacological properties, including anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antiviral, and anticancer activities. Recent studies have revealed the potential of ISL to modulate multiple signaling pathways and cellular processes involved in tumorigenesis, such as apoptosis, autophagy, ferroptosis, cell cycle regulation, and immune modulation. This review comprehensively summarizes the current understanding of ISL's anticancer mechanisms in digestive system tumors, highlighting its multi-targeted actions and potential as a promising therapeutic agent. The findings aim to provide valuable insights for future preclinical studies and clinical applications.
Keywords: Isoliquiritigenin, Digestive system cancers, licorice, Mechanism, natural compounds
Received: 18 Jun 2025; Accepted: 21 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Feng, Li, Bai, Li, Cui and Zhang. 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: Zhichun Li, Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jinan, 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.