Cancer chemoprevention

Abstract

Chemoprevention is defined as nutritional or pharmaceutical interventions designed to prevent or delay cellular transformation. Over the last year, the great excitement and interest in the mechanism, epidemiology, and preclinical and clinical chemopreventive effects in the lower intestine of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs continues and is reflected in the large number of publications on this topic. Investigators from Japan and the United States published preclinical studies of a number of new compounds derived from citrus products and Asian foods and spices with potential clinical promise. Disappointment in the lack of efficacy of epidemiologically predicted micronutrient chemopreventives continues with the publication of an additional clinical trial. This disappointment is tempered by a potentially important observation suggesting that pharmacologic approaches of measuring an individual's food intake and assessing individual variation in disposition, bioavailability, and metabolism of micronutrients might allow for more accurate and individualized nutritional chemopreventive approaches in the future.