Plumbagin is one of the simplest plant secondary metabolite of three major phylogenic families viz. Plumbaginaceae, Droseraceae, and Ebenceae, and exhibits highly potent biological activities, including antioxidant, antiinflammatory, anticancer, antibacterial, and antifungal activities. Recent investigations indicate that these activities arise mainly out of its ability to undergo redox cycling, generating reactive oxygen species and chelating trace metals in biological system. The compound is endowed with a property to inhibit the drug efflux mechanism in drug‐resistant bacteria, thereby allowing intracellular accumulation of the potent drug molecules. An interesting bioactivity exhibited by this compound is the elimination of stringent, conjugative, multidrug‐resistant plasmids from several bacterial strains including opportunistic bacteria, such as Acinetobacter baumannii. Moreover, plumbagin effectively induces apoptosis and causes cell cycle arrest, which is, in part, due to the inactivation of NF‐κB in cancer cells. Therefore, it has been suggested that designing “hybrid drug molecules” of plumbagin by combining it with other appropriate anticancer agents may lead to the generation of novel and potent anticancer drugs with pleiotropic action against human cancers. This comprehensive review is an attempt to understand the chemistry of plumbagin and catalog its biological activities reported to date.

中文翻译：

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Plumbagin及其类似物的药用特性透视

Plumbagin是三个主要系统发育家族中最简单的植物次生代谢产物之一。蓝雪科，茅膏菜，和Ebenceae，并具有很强的生物活性，包括抗氧化，抗炎，抗癌，抗菌和抗真菌活性。最近的研究表明，这些活性主要来自其经历氧化还原循环，产生活性氧物种和螯合生物系统中的微量金属的能力。该化合物具有抑制耐药菌中药物外排机制的特性，从而使有效药物分子在细胞内蓄积。该化合物表现出有趣的生物活性，是从包括机会细菌（如鲍曼不动杆菌）在内的多种细菌菌株中消除了严格的，结合性的，多药耐药的质粒。此外，铅皮有效地诱导细胞凋亡并引起细胞周期停滞，部分原因是癌细胞中NF-κB失活。因此，已经提出通过将其与其他合适的抗癌剂组合来设计李白蛋白的“混合药物分子”可能会导致产生对人类癌症具有多效作用的新型有效的抗癌药物。这项全面的综述是为了了解plumbagin的化学性质并对其迄今报道的生物活性进行分类。