Icaritin: A Novel Natural Candidate for Hematological Malignancies Therapy

Hematological malignancies including leukemia and lymphoma can severely impact human health. With the current therapies combined with chemotherapy, stem cell transplantation, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy, the prognosis of hematologic malignancies improved significantly. However, most hematological malignancies are still incurable. Therefore, research for novel treatment options was continuing with the natural product as one source. Icaritin is a compound extracted from a traditional Chinese herb, Epimedium Genus, and demonstrated an antitumor effect in various neoplasms including hematological malignancies such as leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. In hematological malignancies, icaritin showed multiple cytotoxic effects to induce apoptosis, arrest the cell cycle, inhibit proliferation, promote differentiation, restrict metastasis and infiltration, and suppress the oncogenic virus. The proved underlying mechanisms of the cytotoxic effects of icaritin are different in various cell types of hematological malignancies but associated with the critical cell signal pathway, including PI3K/Akt, JAK/STAT3, and MAPK/ERK/JNK. Although the primary target of icaritin is still unspecified, the existing evidence indicates that icaritin is a potential novel therapeutic agent for neoplasms as with hematological malignancies. Here, in the field of hematology, we reviewed the reported activity of icaritin in hematologic malignancies and the underlying mechanisms and recognized icaritin as a candidate for therapy of hematological malignancies.