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Abstract
Traditional Chinese medicines have been recently recognized as a new source of anticancer
drugs and new chemotherapy adjuvant to enhance the efficacy of chemotherapy and to
ameliorate the side effects of cancer chemotherapies however their healing mechanisms
are still largely unknown. Scutellaria baicalensis is one of the most popular and
multi-purpose herb used in China traditionally for treatment of inflammation, hypertension,
cardiovascular diseases, and bacterial and viral infections. Accumulating evidence
demonstrate that Scutellaria also possesses potent anticancer activities. The bioactive
components of Scutellaria have been confirmed to be flavones. The major constituents
of Scutellaria baicalensis are Wogonin, Baicalein and Baicalin. These phytochemicals
are not only cytostatic but also cytotoxic to various human tumor cell lines in vitro
and inhibit tumor growth in vivo. Most importantly, they show almost no or minor toxicity
to normal epithelial and normal peripheral blood and myeloid cells. The antitumor
functions of these flavones are largely due to their abilities to scavenge oxidative
radicals, to attenuate NF-kappaB activity, to inhibit several genes important for
regulation of the cell cycle, to suppress COX-2 gene expression and to prevent viral
infections. The tumor-selectivity of Wogonin has recently been demonstrated to be
due to its ability to differentially modulate the oxidation-reduction status of malignant
vs. normal lymphocytic cells and to preferentially induce phospholipase C gamma 1,
a key enzyme involved in Ca(2+) signaling, through H(2)O(2) signaling in malignant
lymphocytes. This review is aimed to summarize the research results obtained since
the last 20 years and to highlight the recently discovered molecular mechanisms.