Impact of saffron as an anti-cancer and anti-tumor herb

Abstract

Cancer continues to represent the largest cause of mortality in the world and claims over 6 million lives each year. An extremely promising strategy for cancer prevention today is chemoprevention, which is defined as the use of synthetic or natural agents (alone or in combination) to block the development of cancer in human beings. Plants, vegetables, herbs and spices used in folk and traditional medicine have been accepted currently as one of the main sources of cancer chemopreventive drug discovery and development. This review gives an overview from one of this herbs and spices that is saffron. The chemical composition of saffron has attracted the interest of several research groups during the last decades, and among the estimated more than 150 volatile and several nonvolatile compounds of saffron, approximately 40 – 50 constituents have already been identified. Oral administration of saffron extract inhibited the growth of mouse tumors that were derived from three different kinds of cancer cells and significantly increased the life spans of treated tumor-bearing mice.