Research progress on the anti endometrial cancer effects and mechanisms of traditional Chinese medicine and natural products
Endometrial cancer (EC), also known as uterine body cancer, is a group of epithelial malignant tumors that occur in the endometrium. It usually occurs after menopause and is characterized by abnormal uterine bleeding, abnormal vaginal discharge, lower abdominal pain or lumps. At present, the main treatment for EC is surgery. For patients with medium to high risk of recurrence, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or their combination therapy can be chosen. Although these traditional treatment methods are effective, they can also cause serious side effects such as liver and kidney damage, gastrointestinal toxicity, bone marrow suppression, menstrual disorders, etc; In addition, long-term treatment can also lead to chemotherapy resistance, which affects the progress of treatment.
Previous studies have confirmed that combining Western medicine treatment with traditional Chinese medicine intervention can significantly increase efficacy and reduce toxicity, improving patients’ quality of life. Traditional Chinese medicine has played a significant advantage in assisting the treatment of EC, and continuing to explore low toxicity and broad-spectrum anticancer drugs has become a focus of anti-tumor research. Due to the abundant resources and diverse pharmacological effects of natural products, they have been widely studied by researchers in recent years. The author has reviewed the in vitro and in vivo experimental studies on the anti EC effects of traditional Chinese medicine and natural products in the past five years, and summarized their potential mechanisms of action, in order to provide reference for the clinical treatment of EC using traditional Chinese medicine and natural products.

EC is a common gynecological malignant tumor, and its common pathogenesis is related to the long-term effects of estrogen without progesterone antagonism. With the change of people’s living and eating habits, the incidence rate of EC is also increasing year by year, and the research of high efficiency and low toxicity traditional Chinese medicine and natural products in anti-cancer has gradually become a hot spot. The common TCM syndrome in EC patients is mainly phlegm dampness, followed by damp heat, qi deficiency, yin deficiency, and blood stasis. Clinical practice has shown that some traditional Chinese medicines that clear heat, tonify deficiency, remove blood stasis, and stop bleeding have certain effects on the treatment of EC, and their toxicity is relatively low. In addition, a large number of in vitro and in vivo experiments have confirmed that traditional Chinese medicine, herbal medicine, and their natural active ingredients can exert intervention effects on EC by regulating multiple signaling pathways, including interfering with the cell division cycle, inhibiting estrogen, and suppressing EC cell proliferation; Inhibit tumor angiogenesis, epithelial mesenchymal transition, and cell invasion, enhance cell adhesion ability, and exert inhibitory effects on EC cell metastasis; Inhibiting cell apoptosis through mitochondrial and death receptor pathways; Enhance or weaken cellular autophagy, etc. (see Figure 1).
At present, although there are many experimental studies on the anti EC mechanism of traditional Chinese medicine and natural products, further research is needed from the following aspects: ① Some studies have only found the effect of a certain traditional Chinese medicine or natural product intervening in EC, such as inhibiting cell proliferation, metastasis, inducing cell apoptosis, autophagy, etc. In the future, further research on its mechanism of action at the molecular level is needed based on existing research. ② At present, there is relatively little in vivo experimental research, and models should be established from both in vivo and in vitro combinations to conduct experiments and improve the reference value of clinical research The main source of natural products for effective intervention in EC is plant medicine. In the future, other natural products such as animal medicine, mineral medicine, and marine medicine can be sought to provide new directions for drug development and anti EC The structures of similar natural products are similar, and structure-activity relationship research should be carried out by combining chemical methods to clarify the active functional groups in their structures, providing ideas for designing new derivatives and developing new drugs Combining genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and other technologies, using multi omics data integration to analyze the occurrence, development and treatment mechanisms of EC, searching for potential biomarkers related to EC, and exploring new therapeutic targets By combining traditional Chinese and Western medicine methods, the research focus is placed on developing comprehensive cancer therapies, fully leveraging the low toxicity and high efficiency advantages of traditional Chinese medicine to alleviate the toxic side effects of conventional chemotherapy drugs.