Pharmacological Activity of Quercetin: An Updated Review

Table 1

Anticancer effects of quercetin and its mechanism.

Cancer types	Study designs	Quercetin/derivatives/sources	Study models	Effects/molecular mechanisms	Ref.
Prostate cancer	In vitro	Quercetin	PC3 and LNCaP cells	Increase cyt c, casp 3, casp 8, Bax, Bcl-2, p21Cip1, p27Kip1, and p53	[39]
				Decrease p38, NF-κB, and survivin protein levels and increased the PTEN expression
Liver cancer	In vitro	Quercetin	KIM-1, YN-1, KYN-2, YN-3, HAK-1A, HAK-1B, HAK-2, HAK-3, HAK-4, HAK-5, HAK-6 KMCH-1, and KMCH-2 cells	Inhibit apoptosis and cell cycle arrest	[43]
	In vitro	Quercetin	HepG2, HuH-6, and HepT1 cells. Human hepatoblastoma tissues	Promote the deacetylation of SIRT6 on FZD4 inhibit the activation of Wnt/β-catenin pathway	[47]
Hepatocellular carcinoma	In vitro	Quercetin	LM3 cells. Nude mice	Downregulation of the activation of JAK2 and STAT3	[48]
	In vivo
Prostate cancer	In vitro	Quercetin	LNCaP, DU-145, and PC-3 cells	Affect the mitochondrial integrity and disturb the ROS homeostasis depending, activate Raf/MEK, AKT, and NF-κB pathway	[61]
Colon carcinoma, androgen-sensitive cancer, prostate cancer, human myeloma, blood cancer, breast cancer, and ovarian cancer	In vitro	Quercetin	CT-26, PC-12, LNCaP, PC-3, MOLT-4, U266B1, raji, MCF-7, and CHO cells. Female BALB/c mice	Inhibit the growth of a panel of 9 cancer cell lines	[62]
	In vivo
Human breast cancer	In vitro	Quercetin encapsulated in solid lipid nanoparticles	MCF-7 and MCF-10A cells	Increase (ROS) level and MDA contents, decrease antioxidant enzyme activity and expression of the Bcl-2 protein	[63]
Human breast cancer	In vitro	Quercetin, quercetin-3′-sulfate, and 1- quercetin-3-glucuronide	MCF-7 cells	Inhibit the growth of human breast cancer MCF-7 cells 19 in a dose-dependent manner, with IC50 values of 23.1, 27.6, and 73.2 μM	[64]
Melanoma	In vitro	Quercetin	B164A5 cells	Reduce OCR and ECAR.	[65]
Pancreatic cancer	In vitro	Quercetin and BET inhibitors	K1, 8505c, MDA-T85, and CD18 cells	Decrease hnRNPA1 and enhance the effects of BET inhibitors at suppressing tumor growth	[66]