Contents: Preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Cancer and its management/Irfan Ali Khan and Atiya Khanum. 2. Plant biotechnology in modelling of biopharmaceuticals for cancer/S.S. Mandal, S.A. Akhtar, A. Pandey, D.K. Verma and N.K. Sinha. 3. Plants as source of traditional and modern drugs for cancer/R. Perumal Samy and M. Sarumathi. 4. Role of diet in prevention and cure of cancer/Shaik Imam and S.J. Hussain. 5. Cancer and plant based anticancer drugs/A. Lakshmi Prabha, V. Nandagopalan and V. Kannan. 6. Cancer : Hornets' nest of medical sciences/Amla Batra. 7. Some important herbs used in the treatment of cancer/Shaik Imam and S.J. Hussain. 8. Plants and anticancer compounds/G. Baskar Rajan, Irfan Ali Khan and Atiya Khanum. 9. Plant compounds and chemotherapy/G. Baskar Rajan.

"Cancer, a dreadful disease, is the second common cause of death in the developed countries. According to WHO, out of an estimated total of 50 million deaths annually in the world, more than 5 million are attributed to cancer and the number of deaths from cancer throughout the world is increasing.

Today medicine has its roots in to natural plant products. Most of the drugs in plants accumulated in several years and sometimes, the required plants may not be available or is inadequate, but the production of the formulation will be required to meet the demand. In this context, it is note worthy that the international market, for herbal products is estimated at U.S. dollars 62 billion and as per WHO projections it is expected to rise to U.S. dollars 5 trillion by 2050 A.D. Cancer is, thus, regarded as an emerging health problem in India."