The Anticancer Potential of Maslinic Acid and Its Derivatives: A Review

Abstract

Cancer is still an insurmountable problem for humans and critically attacking human health. In recent years, natural products have gained increasing attention in the field of anti-tumor due to their extensive sources and minimal side effects. Maslinic acid (MA), a pentacyclic triterpene acid mainly derived from the olive tree (Olea europaea L.) has been confirmed to possess great anti-cancer effects. This paper reviewed the inhibitory effect of MA and its derivatives on lung cancer, colon cancer, ovarian cancer, gastric cancer, lymphatic, leukemia, breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, melanoma, prostate cancer, renal cell carcinoma, gallbladder cancer, and bladder cancer, among others. MA inhibited the proliferation of various tumor cells and showed lower IC₅₀ values in melanoma 518A2 cells and gastric cancer MKN28 cells compared with other cell lines. A series of semi-synthetic derivatives obtained by modifying MA chemical structure have been shown to have high cytotoxicity to human tumor cell lines, but low cytotoxicity to non-malignant cells, which is conducive to developing its potential as a chemotherapeutic agent. These studies suggest that MA derivatives have broad prospects in the development of antitumor therapeutics in the future and warrant further study.

Keywords:

• maslinic acid
• tumor
• mechanism
• derivatives

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China: Study on the property-efficacy Relationship of Traditional Chinese Medicine (No.81891012); the National Natural Science Foundation of China: Study on the authenticity of traditional Chinese medicine (NO.81891010); the Outstanding Talents Fund of Double First-Class initiative Construction of Chengdu University of TCM (2020XSGG001); Funds for the Central Universities (No. YJ201880), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 82003879), the Key Project of Science and Technology Department of Sichuan Province (No. 20ZDYF3092); and the Youth Talent Promotion Project of China Association for Science and Technology (CACM-2020-QNRC1-01).

Disclosure

The authors declare no conflicts of interest for this work.