Dietary Essential Oils and Cancer Chemopreventive Potential

Abstract

As cancer development is usually a long process, there is a large window of opportunity to establish prevention strategies that should focus on several environmental factors including nutrition. Cancer chemoprevention with dietary bioactive food components (BFCs) represents a promising strategy to prevent the disease. Dietary essential oils from fruits, vegetables, herbs, and spices represent interesting sources of BFCs with cancer chemopreventive potential. One of its main BFCs is represented by isoprenic derivatives (terpenes and terpenoids) including mainly monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes. Isoprenic derivatives represent one of the most diverse class of natural products produced by plants, with more than 40,000 members identified. Among them, monoterpene geraniol (lemon, lime, orange, and ginger) and sesquiterpene farnesol (lemongrass and chamomile) represent promising essential oil components with cancer chemopreventive potential. They have elicited protective effects in both in vitro and in vivo model systems. Accumulating evidence show that in addition to HMG-CoA reductase, geraniol and farnesol present other molecular targets including NFkB, Cox-2, and antioxidant enzymes. Their low toxicity and regular consumption through diet are further characteristics that reinforce their role as cancer chemopreventive agents. Importantly, bioavailability, metabolism, safety, and mechanism of action are aspects that should be deeply investigated, especially in clinical trials.