Probing into Therapeutic Anti-cancer Potential of Apigenin: Recent Trends and Future Directions.

BACKGROUND Natural products represent a therapeutic charm for the treatment of inflammation-associated diseases. Flavonoids which are one of the special categories of such natural products, have previously shown promising therapeutic potential. OBJECTIVES The current review discusses about the synthetic preview and anti-inflammatory potential of apigenin along with the underlying molecular mechanism in chronic human diseases especially cancer. In addition, the relevant patents on therapeutic potential of apigenin have also been mentioned. METHODS Literature search was carried out using PubMed/Science, Google Scholar etc. which was further expended by the different combination of keywords: apigenin, inflammation, mechanism,therapeutic potential, cancer etc. Patent information was retrieved by searching the key terms: apigenin, inflammation, therapeutic potential from various databanks including Espacenet, Google patents, freepatent online and mendeley of WIPO, USPTO, SIPO, JPO, KIPO and EPO databases. CONCLUSION Studies related to the anti-inflammatory and anticancer potential of apigenin have been explored through this review article. Moreover, the patent analysis of apigenin has further strengthened its therapeutic role. Probing into the therapeutic properties of apigenin, further add value to this molecule in terms of its down regulation of major inflammatory and cancer associated signaling pathways. The article simultaneously would assist the scientific community to precisely understand the role of apigenin and design novel anti-cancer therapies.