Aggressive and recurrent gynecological cancers are associated with worse prognosis and a lack of effective therapeutic response. Ovarian cancer (OC) patients are often diagnosed in advanced stages, when drug resistance, angiogenesis, relapse, and metastasis impact survival outcomes. Currently, surgical debulking, radiotherapy, and/or chemotherapy remain the mainstream treatment modalities; however, patients suffer unwanted side effects and drug resistance in the absence of targeted therapies. Hence, it is urgent to decipher the complex disease biology and identify potential biomarkers, which could greatly contribute to making an early diagnosis or predicting the response to specific therapies. This review aims to critically discuss the current therapeutic strategies for OC, novel drug-delivery systems, and potential biomarkers in the context of genetics and molecular research. It emphasizes how the understanding of disease biology is related to the advancement of technology, enabling the exploration of novel biomarkers that may be able to provide more accurate diagnosis and prognosis, which would effectively translate into targeted therapies, ultimately improving patients’ overall survival and quality of life.

The downregulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) facilitates precancerous tumor development, even though increasing the level of ROS can promote metastasis. The transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) signaling pathway plays an anti-tumorigenic role in the initial stages of cancer development but a pro-tumorigenic role in later stages that fosters cancer metastasis. TGF-β can regulate the production of ROS unambiguously or downregulate antioxidant systems. ROS can influence TGF-β signaling by enhancing its expression and activation. Thus, TGF-β signaling and ROS might significantly coordinate cellular processes that cancer cells employ to expedite their malignancy. In cancer cells, interplay between oxidative stress and TGF-β is critical for tumorigenesis and cancer progression. Thus, both TGF-β and ROS can develop a robust relationship in cancer cells to augment their malignancy. This review focuses on the appropriate interpretation of this crosstalk between TGF-β and oxidative stress in cancer, exposing new potential approaches in cancer biology.

One in three cancer deaths worldwide are caused by gastric and colorectal cancer malignancies. Although the incidence and fatality rates differ significantly from country to country, the rates of these cancers in East Asian nations such as South Korea and Japan have been increasing each year. Above all, the biggest danger of this disease is how challenging it is to recognize in its early stages. Moreover, most patients with these cancers do not present with any disease symptoms before receiving a definitive diagnosis. Currently, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are being used for the early prediction of several other diseases, and research has been carried out on these applications. Exhaled VOCs from patients possess remarkable potential as novel biomarkers, and their analysis could be transformative in the prevention and early diagnosis of colon and stomach cancers. VOCs have been spotlighted in recent studies due to their ease of use. Diagnosis on the basis of patient VOC analysis takes less time than methods using gas chromatography, and results in the literature demonstrate that it is possible to determine whether a patient has certain diseases by using organic compounds in their breath as indicators. This study describes how VOCs can be used to precisely detect cancers; as more data are accumulated, the accuracy of this method will increase, and it can be applied in more fields.

Periodontitis and diabetes mellitus are two highly prevalent chronic conditions that share a bidirectional relationship, significantly impacting public health. Periodontitis, a gum inflammation caused by microbial dysbiosis, aggravates glycemic control in diabetics, while uncontrolled diabetes heightens periodontitis severity. These conditions create a vicious cycle, where inflammation and microbial dysbiosis mutually drive disease progression, exacerbating systemic health. The underlying mechanisms involve inflammation, immune dysfunction, and microbial dysbiosis, with both diseases contributing to a chain of chronic inflammation that exacerbates systemic health. This relationship is significant because managing one condition can significantly impact the other. In diabetic individuals, interventions such as periodontal therapy have shown effectiveness in improving glycemic control, underscoring the potential of integrated strategies for managing these conditions simultaneously. In this review, we highlight the importance of a deeper understanding of the molecular and immunological interactions between these diseases is essential for developing integrated therapeutic approaches, with the potential to enhance the quality of life of the patient significantly.

Alternative medicine has renewed its growing public interest in recent times due to inequality of patients and healthcare professionals’ ratios with increased workload for the latter, various side effects of modern medicine, lack of complete remission from chronic diseases, high cost of new drugs, and emerging new diseases. Hence, people have become more dependent on treatment systems replying on alternative medicine or herbal medicine from traditional medicinal practitioners. Alternative medicine has grown substantially over time and encompasses several millennia of therapeutic systems. The significant areas of alternative medicine include mind–body therapies, body manipulation, and the therapies based on biological systems. Natural products based biological treatment is the most popular of them as nature has endowed us with abundance of effective pharmacologically active phytochemicals. These phytochemicals possess numerous specific clinical health benefits including antioxidant, antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, anti-infectious and analgesic effects. In addition, alternative medicine is easily accessible, affordable, most often noninvasive, and provides favorable benefits during terminal periods of some diseases. However, due to the lack of well-designed clinical trials, the safety and effectiveness of many alternative medicines/therapies remains elusive. This chapter will critically discuss major areas, uses, safety and regulation, current challenges & future perspectives of alternative medicine.