Plant Metabolomics: The Future of Anticancer Drug Discovery

Drug development from medicinal plants constitutes an important strategy for finding natural anticancer therapies. While several plant secondary metabolites with potential antitumor activities have been identified, well-defined mechanisms of action remained uncovered. In fact, studies of medicinal plants have often focused on the genome, transcriptome, and proteome, dismissing the relevance of the metabolome for discovering effective plant-based drugs. Metabolomics has gained huge interest in cancer research as it facilitates the identification of potential anticancer metabolites and uncovers the metabolomic alterations that occur in cancer cells in response to treatment. This holds great promise for investigating the mode of action of target metabolites. Although metabolomics has made significant contributions to drug discovery, research in this area is still ongoing. In this review, we emphasize the significance of plant metabolomics in anticancer research, which continues to be a potential technique for the development of anticancer drugs in spite of all the challenges encountered. As well, we provide insights into the essential elements required for performing effective metabolomics analyses.