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Review
. 2022 Mar 7;11(5):1465.
doi: 10.3390/jcm11051465.

Natural Bioactives: Back to the Future in the Fight against Human Papillomavirus? A Narrative Review

Silvia Massa  1 , Riccardo Pagliarello  1   2 , Francesca Paolini  3 , Aldo Venuti  3
Affiliations
Review

Natural Bioactives: Back to the Future in the Fight against Human Papillomavirus? A Narrative Review

Silvia Massa et al. J Clin Med. .

Abstract

Human papillomavirus (HPV) still represents an important threat to health worldwide. Better therapy in terms of further improvement of outcomes and attenuation of related side-effects is desirable. The pharmaceutical industry has always targeted natural substances-phytochemicals in particular-to identify lead compounds to be clinically validated and industrially produced as antiviral and anticancer drugs. In the field of HPV, numerous naturally occurring bioactives and dietary phytochemicals have been investigated as potentially valuable in vitro and in vivo. Interference with several pathways and improvement of the efficacy of chemotherapeutic agents have been demonstrated. Notably, some clinical trials have been conducted. Despite being endowed with general safety, these natural substances are in urgent need of further assessment to foresee their clinical exploitation. This review summarizes the basic research efforts conducted so far in the study of anti-HPV properties of bio-actives with insights into their mechanisms of action and highlights the variety of their natural origin in order to provide comprehensive mapping throughout the different sources. The clinical studies available are reported, as well, to highlight the need of uniformity and consistency of studies in the future to select those natural compounds that may be suited to clinical application.

Keywords: HPV; algal; bioactives; chemoprevention; combination treatments; marine; microbial compounds; natural; phytochemicals.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Sources (plants, marine environment, bacteria) and nature (purified compounds and their combinations, fractions, extracts, mixtures) of formulations that have been investigated against HPV.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Phytochemicals investigated against HPV.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The plant molecular farming approach. Through stable or transient expression of recombinant proteins, either exogenous proteins and metabolites accumulation or improvement of biosynthesis pathways can be achieved (NPBT: new plant breeding techniques; Crispr-Cas: clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats–Crispr-associated protein).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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