Recent progress of oridonin and its derivatives for cancer therapy and drug resistance

Numerous antitumor drugs exhibited excellent anti-proliferation activities, discovered from natural products. Oridonin is isolated from a traditional Chinese medicine Isodon rubescens , and it exhibit various biological functions including anticancer, anti-inflammation, antibacterial, and so on. The anticancer mechanisms of oridonin include apoptosis, autophagy, cell cycle arrest, and so on. However, clinical research and application of oridonin has been hampered, due to the poor pharmaceutical property. So many studies on oridonin have been explored in the purpose of improve the pharmaceutical property, including investigation of the mechanism of action in depth and structural modification. In this review, we summarized oridonin and oridonin derivatives as potential anticancer agents, and detailed discussion on biological properties, mechanism of actions and potential for overcoming therapeutic resistance.