Significance of Rumex Vesicarius as Anticancer Remedy against Hepatocellular Carcinoma: an Experimental Animal Study

Anticancer therapy is one of the biggest challenges in medicine. Therefore, searching for highly efficient antitumor drugs remains a hot area of research. Plants and plant-based products are gaining importance against variety of diseases due to their non-toxic and no / less side effects. Hence, we have been continuously working on the identification and characterization of medicinal plants (Khan, 2012). Rumex vesicarius L. of the family Polygonaceae is an edible herb, locally called hummayed, growing as wild herb throughout desert and semi-desert areas of Saudi Arabia. R. vesicarius is widely used as food, as a medicinal herb and as an antidote to scorpion stings (Shahat et al., 2013). The medicinal importance of R. vesicarius is a reflection to its chemical composition since the plant contains many bioactive substances such as flavonoids, anthraquinons, carotenoids, vitamins, lipids and organic acids, which are known to be anticancer,