Abstract
The invasiveness and low survivability on the part of patients associated with cancer continues to raise global concern. Different approaches have been used in the treatment and restoration of normalcy in cancer patients. However, most of the therapeutic strategies employed are challenged with high cost, low efficacy, high toxicity, and multiple side effects. In recent times, emergent studies have provided evidence that functional foods and their bioactive components serve roles as potential agents in the prevention and treatment of cancers. Moreover, global interest has focused on how this chemoprevention potential of functional foods can be explored as plant-based medicines for drug development. Although, the literature is replete with the mechanism of chemoprevention elicited by individual components of functional foods, there are limited reports on their overall anti-cancer mechanisms.
Therefore, this systematic review aims to unify the anti-cancer mechanisms of functional foods in cervical, breast, and liver cancers which were selected due to their high incidence and mortality globally. We reviewed articles from NCBI/PUBMED from 2010 until February 2020. Three different search words used include "Functional food and cervical cancer"; "Functional foods and breast cancer"; "Functional foods and hepatocarcinoma". Consequently, 434 scientific papers resulted from the three search words. However, after applying the inclusion/exclusion criteria, 37 articles were selected: 14 on cervical cancer, 10 on breast cancer, and 13 on hepatocellular carcinoma. We subsequently emphasize the anti-cancer mechanisms of various functional foods in the studies selected and these include induction of apoptosis, cell cycle arrest, disruption of microtubular network, downregulation of anti-apoptotic BcI-2 family expression, induction of autophagy, modulation of signaling cascades, ROS generation, and suppression of specific genes. Therefore, functional foods possess effective chemoprevention mechanisms which can be explored in drug development.