Abstract
Cancer mortality rates are undergoing a global downward trend; however, metastasis and relapse after surgery and adjuvant treatments still correlate with poor prognosis and represent the most significant challenges in the treatment of this disease. Advances in genomics, metabolomics, and proteomics are improving our understanding regarding cancer metabolic diversity, resulting in detailed classifications of tumors and raising the effectiveness of precision medicine. Likewise, the growing knowledge of interactions between nutrients and the expression of certain genes could lead to cancer therapies based on precision nutrition strategies. This review aims to identify the recent advances in the knowledge of the mechanistic role of bioactive phytochemicals in foodstuffs in tumor progression, metastasis, and chemo-resistance in order to assess their potential use in precision nutrition therapies targeting relapse in lung, breast, colon, and prostate cancer, and leukemia. A considerable number of bioactive phytochemicals in foodstuffs were identified in the literature with proven effects modulating tumor growth, progression, and metastasis. In addition, the use of foodstuffs in cancer, and specifically in relapse therapies, is being reinforced by the development of different formulations that significantly increase the therapeutic efficiency of these products. This can open the possibility for testing combinations of bioactive phytochemicals with cancer relapse treatments as a potential prevention strategy.
Highlights
The objective of this review is to identify the recent advances in the knowledge of mechanisms that support the effects of bioactive phytochemicals in foodstuffs associated with molecular targets of tumor progression, metastasis, or chemo-resistance, in order to assess the potential use of these products in precision nutrition therapies addressing the prevention of relapse in lung, breast, colon, and prostate cancer, and leukemia
In the context of cancer research, studies that refer to nutritional therapies based on the use of bioactive foodstuffs in adjuvant treatments are still limited, current results are encouraging since there are several phytochemical bioactive foodstuffs with proven modulating effects of tumor growth, progression, and metastasis, and can be tested in humans with a reasonable probability of success if they are applied in cancer relapse treatments (Figure 2)
The compounds currently identified for this purpose are in general extensively-studied products in the last years such as the polyphenols apigenin, epigallocatechin gallate, procyanidin B2-3,3-di-O-gallate, quercetin, naringenin, secoisolariciresinol diglucoside, and curcumin, as well as docosahexaenoic acid and β-Sitosterol-d-glucoside lipids
Summary
Colon, Lung, Prostate and Leukemia: The Deadliest Cancers. Breast, prostate, and colon cancers have the highest overall incidence and represent 36.4%. Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization [1]. Besides their high occurrence, these types of cancer add up to a mortality rate that reaches 49.2% of the diagnosed cases. In the last five years international scientific production related to new basic and translational discoveries on cancer has grown by 5% annually. Colon, breast, prostate, and leukemia cancers account for 51% of scientific publications on cancer in this period (Web of Science, Clarivate Analytics, Philadelphia, PA, USA). Many papers address the association between gene regulation and cancer progression or metastasis, still representing the main approach in cancer research. An increasing number of investigations based on genomics and epigenomics are focusing on the Nutrients 2019, 11, 2799; doi:10.3390/nu11112799 www.mdpi.com/journal/nutrients
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