Dihydroartemisinin as a Sensitizing Agent in Cancer Therapies

Abstract

Cancer is one of the major threats to human health. Although humans have struggled with cancer for decades, the efficacy of treatments for most tumors is still very limited. Dihydroartemisinin (DHA) is a derivative of artemisinin, a first-line antimalarial drug originally developed in China. Beyond the anti-malarial effect, DHA has also been reported to show anti-inflammatory, anti-parasitosis, and immune-modulating properties in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, an increasing number of studies report that DHA possesses anticancer activities on a wide range of cancer types both in vitro and in vivo, as well as enhances the efficacy of chemotherapy, targeted therapy, and even radiotherapy. However, the mechanisms of DHA on different tumors differ in various ways. In this review, we intend to summarize how DHA sensitizes cancer cells to anti-cancer therapies, highlight its molecular mechanisms and pharmacological effects in vitro and in vivo as well as in current clinical trials, and discuss potential issues concerning DHA. Hopefully, more attention will be paid to DHA as a sensitizer for cancer therapy in the future.

Keywords:

• dihydroartemisinin
• anti-tumor drugs
• sensitizer
• molecular mechanism

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Nanchong Key Laboratory of Molecular Diagnosis and Therapeutics of Tumor, for providing the research platform of the current study.

Disclosure

The authors declare no conflicts of interest in this work.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Applied Foundational Research Program of Sichuan Province (Grant No.2021YJ0202) and the Science and Technology Support Program of Nanchong (Grant No.16YFZJ0133, 18SXHZ0514, and 18SXHZ0579).