Abstract
Background: Expression status of hormone and growth factor receptors dictates treatment options for targeted chemo-endocrine therapy in breast cancer. Chemo-endocrine therapy is associated with systemic toxicity, therapy resistance and emergence of therapy-resistant cancer stem cells. These limitations emphasize identification of testable alternatives. Natural products including dietary phytochemicals and Chinese nutritional herbs exhibit low systemic toxicity, long-term human consumption and preclinical efficacy, and may function as testable therapeutic alternatives.
Objective: The main objective of this mini-review is to discuss published evidence on cellular models for clinical breast cancer subtypes, mechanistic leads for growth inhibition by nutritional herbs and applicability of drug-resistant cancer stem cell models to investigate stem cell targeting efficacy of nutritional herbs. Collectively, published evidence supports the concept that Chinese nutritional herbs may function as testable therapeutic alternatives for breast cancer.
Conclusion: The published evidence provides proof of concept that investigations on drug-resistant breast cancer stem cell models may provide mechanistic leads for effective nutritional herbs as novel therapeutic alternatives for breast cancer.
Future Prospects: Discussed evidence provides a conceptual basis for future investigations on patient-derived tumor explants and organoids. Experimental approaches using clinical tumor samples are likely to reduce extrapolation of the data for clinical relevance and translatability