A REVIEW OF CINNAMON AS A POTENT ANTICANCER DRUG

ABSTRACTCinnamon is one of the most popular and oldest spices. Several recent studies have found that cinnamon also has anticancer activity. The present workhas reported the antineoplastic potential of the spice cinnamon in cancer. Collectively, these data suggest that cinnamon could be proposed as a potentanticancer drug. The bibliographic investigation was carried out during January 2004-December 2014 by analyzing journals and peer-reviewedpapers from the last decades. Peer-reviewed articles were indexed by Scopus, PubMed, and Google scholar. Only relevant studies published in Englishwere considered. There were 24 articles that reported the cytotoxic activity of cinnamon on all culture cell lines. About 8 species of Cinnamomum havebeen isolated with their active compounds for cancer cell lines. Based on the reviews of those articles, we conclude that cinnamon has the potentialto be further developed as an anticancer agent. In further development, however, not only the research for investigating the anticancer activities, butalso research for investigating the safety of cinnamon to the normal cell need to be performed.Keywords: Review, Cinnamon, Anticancer, Cinnamomum species, Cell lines