Progress of ERK Pathway-Modulated Natural Products for Anti-Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Activity

In recent decades, there has been a significant increase in new lung cancer cases and deaths globally, especially in China, which hindered the extension of human life expectancy and severely threatened public health. Natural products are important and sustainable sources of new anticancer drug molecules, offering new bioactive molecules with various structures and biofunctions for new anticancer drug development, which accounted for 40% of all anticancer drugs. Natural-based compounds could inhibit cancer cell proliferation and migration through a variety of anticancer mechanisms by the modulation/regulation of multiple biotargets and cell signaling pathways. In this review, we summarized the anticancer activities of flavonoids, terpenoids, glycosides, alcohols, coumarins, saccharides, and other natural compounds that could modulate the ERK-related signaling pathway in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells. We further elucidated the mechanistic pathways of natural compound combinations and computationally predicted their molecular docking affinities with ERK1/ERK2 protein targets, as well as providing an outlook on current studies, with the expectation that natural compounds will play more significant roles in future antitumor chemotherapy regimens.