Natural Phenolic Compounds From Medicinal Herbs and Dietary Plants: Potential Use for Cancer Prevention

Abstract Natural phenolic compounds play an important role in cancer prevention and treatment. Phenolic compounds from medicinal herbs and dietary plants include phenolic acids, flavonoids, tannins, stilbenes, curcuminoids, coumarins, lignans, quinones, and others. Various bioactivities of phenolic compounds are responsible for their chemopreventive properties (e.g., antioxidant, anticarcinogenic, or antimutagenic and anti-inflammatory effects) and also contribute to their inducing apoptosis by arresting cell cycle, regulating carcinogen metabolism and ontogenesis expression, inhibiting DNA binding and cell adhesion, migration, proliferation or differentiation, and blocking signaling pathways. This review covers the most recent literature to summarize structural categories and molecular anticancer mechanisms of phenolic compounds from medicinal herbs and dietary plants. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research was supported by grants from the University of Hong Kong (Seed Funding for Basic Research). We are grateful to Dr. Harold Corke and Dr. Mei Sun (School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong) for their revision and comments on this manuscript. Notes a Abbreviations are as follows: ROS, reactive oxygen species; SOD, superoxide dismutase; TNF, tumor necrosis factor; LOX, lipoxygenases; iNOS, inducible nitric oxide synthase; COX-2, cyclooxygenase-2; XO, xanthine oxidase; PKC, protein kinase C; PTK, protein tyrosine kinase; UDP, NADPH, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate; ICAM-1, intercellular adhesion molecule-1; VCAM-1, vascular cell adhesion molecule-1; Bcl-2, B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma-2; nuclear factor kappa of activated B cells; AP-1, activator protein-1; MAPK, mitogen-activated protein kinases; LNCaP, lymph node carcinoma of the prostate; EGCG, epigallocatechin gallate; ECG, epicatechin gallate.