REVIEW article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Pharmacology of Anti-Cancer Drugs
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1650560
Anti-tumor effects and mechanisms of traditional Chinese medicine Gamboge: a review
Provisionally accepted
- 1Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, China
- 2China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, China
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Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) Gamboge is a dried resin obtained from the Garcinia hanburyi Hook f. For over 500 years, TCM Gamboge has been used to treat scrofula, carbuncle, jaundice, furuncle, and other chronic and stubborn diseases. An increasing amount of evidence has proven the significant anti-cancer activities of the main active ingredients from Gamboge in recent years. The ingredients of Gamboge, such as Gambogic acid (GA) and Gambogenic acid (GNA) can inhibit tumor growth through various processes, including apoptosis induction, cell cycle arrest, tumor cell invasion and migration inhibition, and autophagy regulation. This review elaborates on the role of the main active ingredients of Gamboge in treating cancers. It would be enlightening to provide the possible therapeutic applications of Gamboge in the clinic.
Keywords: Gamboge, anti-tumor, Gambogic acid, Gambogenic acid, Traditional Chinese Medicine
Received: 20 Jun 2025; Accepted: 21 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhou, Chen, Zhu and Lin. 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: Binyan Lin, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, 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.