ABSTRACT

Diosgenin (Dg) is a naturally occurring steroidal sapogenin detected in plants such as Dioscorea nipponica, Solanum incanum, Solanum xanthocarpum and Trigonella foenum-graecum. Diosgenin, an active phytochemical, has been administered to repair cancer types of lung, liver, prostate, colon, breast, melanoma, gastric and leukaemia. Dg has a unique structure corresponding to estrogens. Numerous preclinical studies have revealed the anti-cancer effects of Dg in vivo and in vitro and reverse multi-drug crises in tumour cells and sensitize them to typical chemotherapy. In addition, Dg availability is controlled by pharmaceutical corporations manufacturing steroidal drugs. Some new Dg analogues and nanoformulations have been developed with more robust anti-cancer effectiveness and pharmacokinetic outline. In this review, we discuss the versatile anti-cancer properties of Dg that have found application in pharmaceuticals and the diverse intracellular molecular targets modulated by Dg that abrogates the oncogenic process. The evaluation could be helpful to investigators in the development of an alternative model for the evaluation of different diseases based on Dg.