Emerging themes of regulation of oncogenic proteins by Solanum nigrum and its bioactive molecules in different cancers.

Research over the decades has sequentially and systematically provided a near-complete resolution of multifaceted and therapeutically challenging nature of cancer. Drug discovery from plants has enjoyed a renaissance in the past few years. Natural products have provided many of the lead structures, which are currently being used as templates for the design and synthesis of novel compounds with biologically enhanced properties. With the maturity and diversification of technologies, there is a growing need to design high-throughput functional assays for the evaluation of the myriad of compounds being catalogued. This review sheds light on the tumor suppressive properties of Solanum nigrum and its bioactive ingredients. Several worthy of mention include uttroside B, solanine, solamargine, and physalins, which have been tested for efficacy in cancer cell lines and xenografted mice. We have summarized the most recent findings related to S. nigrum-mediated regulation of intracellular protein network in different cancers. α-Solanine, an active component of S. nigrum, is involved in the regulation of microRNA-21 (miRNA-21) (oncogenic) and miRNA-138 (tumor suppressor) in prostate cancer. However, this is the only available evidence that gives us a clue related to the tumor suppressive effects exerted by components of S. nigrum at a posttranscriptional level. More interestingly, S. nigrum and its components exerted inhibitory effects on different pathways including PI3K/AKT, JAK-STAT, VEGF/VEGFR, and matrix metalloproteinases in different cancers. We also provide an overview of new tools, methodologies, and approaches, which will allow researchers to extract as much information as possible out of the tremendous data sets currently being generated. The use of computational tools will be helpful in processing structurally complex natural products and also in prediction of their macromolecular targets.