CASP3 and cervical cancer: Jin et al. (2014) reported that formononetin, a phytoestrogen from the root of Astragalus membranaceus and an O-methylated isoflavone, inhibits the growth of tumors from the human cervical cancer cell line HeLa, which mainly depends on Akt inactivation and caspase-3 activation. In addition, Duan and Wang (2002) conducted a clinical study on the effect of Astragalus in efficacy enhancing and toxicity reducing of CT in patients with malignant tumors; the results show that Astragalus could inhibit the tumor development, which is consistent with our study results.