Abstract

Cancer is a complex phenomenon that encompasses over 200 different diseases that are the consequence of accumulation of genetic alterations (Roy et al., 2017). Despite the progress in the development of novel treatments for cancer, it still remains one of the prominent causes of death globally. Among the main reasons for the increasing rate of mortality is the emergence of chemoresistant or immunotolerant cancer cells that don’t respond to chemotherapy or immunotherapy modalities respectively (Maeda and Khatami 2018). The adverse events and toxicities associated with the available therapeutics can also pose a risk to patients. These challenges can be overcome by the utilization of natural products and their derivatives in the therapeutic regimen and it is well evident that many of the chemotherapeutic agents, currently used in the clinical setting, such as taxol, vincristine, irinotecan, etoposide, and paclitaxel etc. are derived from natural sources. Moreover, several researches have shown that the co-administration of natural products along with chemotherapeutic agents can increase their efficacy and even reverses chemoresistance. Therefore, this Research Topic was floated to attract researches and studies related to the potential of natural products in the chemosensitization of cancer cells to enhance the effect of chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Interestingly, the single treatment of natural product such as tetramethylpyrazine (TMP) isolated from Ligusticum chuanxiong Hort is shown to be effective against different cancers at preclinical stages (Yang et al.). Another example of a such paradigm was discussed by Li et al., where they have reported the anticancer potential OPEN ACCESS