Clara Bik-San Lau, Chun-Kwok Wong and Ping-Chung Leung from Partner State Key Laboratory of Phytochemistry and Plant Resources in West China, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, , Institute of Chinese Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Department of Chemical Pathology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Konghve just published in the Journal of Cancer Therapy a commentary entitled : Herbal Medicine Offers Great Potential in Support of Metronomic Cancer Therapy.

Despite multiple advances in cancer treatment, a majority of patients worldwide still die of their diseases. The uncertainty of cure and the high costs have led to the popularly of complementary and alternative medicine in cancer treatment. Herbal medicine has particular attraction because it has been shown to be working on a multi-targets direction: promoting apoptosis of cancer cells, anti-angiogenesis and immuno-modulating. Research on creating a simple herbal formula with multiple effects of cancer control has started and showed in laboratory platforms promising results. Similarly, metronomic chemotherapy can lead to response and long term stabilization through anti-angiogenesis, immuno- modulations and cancer cell apoptosis. These findings are indeed comparable to the use of multiple targets herbal medicine. Here the authors suggest that metronomic chemotherapy, can be combined with herbal medicine to achieve synergistic effects and could lead to affordable to all patients.

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