Ellagic acid as a potent anticancer drug: A comprehensive review on in vitro, in vivo, in silico, and drug delivery studies

Ellagic acid as a polyphenol or micronutrient which can be naturally found in different vegetables and fruits, have gained considerable attention for cancer therapy due to considerable biological activities and different molecular targets. Ellagic acid with low hydrolysis and lipophilic and hydrophobic nature is not able to be absorbed in circulation. So, accumulation inside the intestinal epithelial cells or metabolization to other urolithins lead to limitation of direct evaluation of EA effects in clinical studies. This review focuses on the studies which supported anticancer activity of pure or fruit-extracted ellagic acid through in vitro, in vivo, in silico and drug delivery methods. The results demonstrate ellagic acid modulates the expression of various genes incorporated in cancer-related process of apoptosis and proliferation, inflammation related-gens and oxidative-related gens. Moreover, ellagic acid formulation in carriers composed of lipid, silica, chitosan, iron- bovine serum albumin nanoparticles obviously enhanced the stable release and confident delivery with minimum loss. Also, in silico analysis proved that ellagic acid was able to be placed at position of co-crystal ADP, in the deep cavity of protein target, and tightly interact with binding pocket residues leading to suppression of substrate availability of protein and its activation inhibition. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.