Cancer

Cancer is a genetic disease because it can be traced to alteration within specific genes, but in most cases, it is not an inherited disease. The genetic alterations that lead to most cancers arise in the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of a somatic cell during the lifetime of affected individual. Because of these genetic changes, cancer cells proliferate uncontrollably, producing malignant tumour that invade surrounding healthy tissue. As long as the growth of tumour remains localized, the disease can usually be treated and cured by surgical removal of tumour. But malignant tumours tend to metastases, that is, to spawn cells that break away from the parent mass, enter the lymphatic or vascular circulation, and spread to distant sites in the body where they establish lethal secondary tumours (metastases) that are no longer amenable to surgical removal. Despite, various exogenous and endogenous factors are known to affect the normal pattern of cell growth, by which cell becomes a cancerous. Species specificity and identity of biological organisms maintain by the unchanged genomic structure throughout their life period. The ratio of cell growth and cell death is strictly balanced through developmental and homeostatic processes in multi-cellular organisms (Bolsover et al, 1997).

1.1 Historical Backgrounds

Rig Veda, an ancient Indian scripture compiled five thousand years ago, and records the science of healing. A Fatal tumor in the throat is described in Atharva Veda (Mehta and Bansal, 2004). The Egyptians (c.1600BC) were the first to realize that tumors arising in various parts of the body differ in their behaviors and therefore, should be treated in different ways. References were also made to the treatment of such tumors by excision...

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...tantly making efforts to discover new drugs and design better protocols for this cancer. Synthetic anticancer drugs kill the cancer cells but they are also harmful to the normal cells. Since, increase in the use of these drugs in cancer therapy leads to many side effects and undesirable hazards, there is a worldwide trend to go back to natural resources, i.e., traditional plant preparations which are not only therapeutically effective but are actually acceptable and economically within the reach of even the neediest people. The present study was undertaken to understand the effectiveness of the plants against hepatocarcinogenesis. Any practical solution in combating this dreadful disease is bound to be of paramount importance. Generally speaking, integrated approach to combine western and herbal medicines to treat cancer has proved to be relatively satisfactory.