New insights on the anticancer properties of dietary polyphenols

Abstract

Cancer, one of the major causes of death across the world, has shown to be a largely preventable disease, highly susceptible to modulation by dietary factors. Phenolic compounds, abundant in vegetables and fruits ubiquitous in diet, were described to play an important role as chemopreventive agents. Since conventional therapeutic and surgical approaches have not been able to control the incidence of most cancer types, the development of chemopreventive strategies is an urgent priority in public health. The current diet phenolic intake is often insufficient to protect from mutagens (either exogenous or endogenous), which leads to the need for dietary supplementation as an alternative approach. Research efforts are placing increasing emphasis on identifying the biological mechanisms and in particular the signal transduction pathways related to the chemopreventive activities of these compounds. These effects are believed to occur by the regulation of signaling pathways such as nuclear factor-kB (NF-kB), activator protein-1 (AP-1) or mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK). Dietary polyphenols can exert their effects on these pathways separately or sequentially and in addition the occurrence of crosstalk between these pathways cannot be overlooked. By modulating cell signaling pathways, polyphenols activate cell death signals and induce apoptosis in precancerous or malignant cells resulting in the inhibition of cancer development or progression. However, regulation of cell signaling pathways by dietary polyphenols can also lead to cell proliferation/survival or inflammatory responses due to increased expression of several genes. The present review summarizes the most recent advances providing new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying the promising anticarcinogenic activity of dietary polyphenols. ß

A conformational study of hydroxyflavones by vibrational spectroscopy coupled to DFT calculations

“…In the last decade, the beneficial properties of phytochemicals have lead to a vigorous search for novel antioxidants from natural sources, involving the nutritional, pharmacological and medicinal chemistry fields [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16], with particular emphasis on the prevention of cancer and cardiovascular distress through the consumption of this kind of nutraceuticals in the daily diet [17][18][19][20]. Accordingly, special attention has been paid to phenolic acids, anthocyanins, coumarins, tannins and flavonoids (including flavones and isoflavones), the latter being the largest group among phytochemicals [21].…”

Antioxidant phenolic esters with potential anticancer activity: solution equilibria studied by Raman spectroscopy

“…[1 -5] In particular, phenolic antioxidant compounds are capable of preventing or inhibiting carcinogenesis at different levels, by distinct mechanisms, thereby reducing the risk and/or progression of certain types of cancer. [6,7] Accordingly, a growing interest in phenolic antioxidant agents is emerging, aiming at the prevention of numerous diseases mainly caused by the occurrence of deleterious free radical species. [6,8 -12] For phenolic acid derivatives such as hydroxycinnamic and hydroxybenzoic n-alkyl esters, either of natural or synthetic origin, the presence of the ring substituent hydroxyl groups is known to be an essential chemical feature for their particular biological profile, while the influence of the nature of both the pendant carbon chain and the ester moiety is still controversial.…”

Synthetic Resveratrol Derivatives and Their Biological Activities: A Review

“…Some studies also indicated that the anticancer effect of resveratrol was mediated by inhibiting key proteins in signal transduction pathways such as mitogen-activated protein kinases, activator protein-1 (AP-1), and NF-κB [3]. Resveratrol could also affect cell-cycle regulation and apoptosis [27]. The mentioned results suggested that resveratrol could be developed to be an effective cancer chemoprevention and therapeutics agent.…”