Anticarcinogenic Effects of Dietary Phytoestrogens and Their Chemopreventive Mechanisms

Abstract

Phytoestrogens are phenolic compounds derived from plants and exert an estrogenic as well as an antiestrogenic effect and also various biological efficacies. Chemopreventive properties of phytoestrogens has emerged from epidemiological observations indicating that the incidence of some cancers including breast and prostate cancers is much lower in Asian people, who consume significantly higher amounts of phytoestrogens than Western people. There are 4 main classes of phytoestrogens: isoflavones, stilbenes, coumestans, and lignans. Currently, resveratrol is recognized as another major phytoestrogen present in grape and red wine and has been studied in many biological studies. Phytoestrogens have biologically diverse profitabilities and advantages such as low cytotoxicity to patients, lack of side effects in clinical trials, and pronounced benefits in a combined therapy. In this review, we highlighted the effects of genistein, daidzein, and resveratrol in relation with their anticarcinogenic activity. A lot of in vitro and in vivo results on their chemopreventive properties were presented along with the underlying mechanisms. Besides well-known mechanisms such as antioxidant property and apoptosis, newly elucidated anticarcinogenic modes of action including epigenetic modifications and topoisomerase inhibition have been provided to examine the possibility of phytoestrogens as promising reagents for cancer chemoprevention and/or treatment and to suggest the importance of plant-based diet of phytoestrogens.

FUNDING

This work was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) of the Republic of Korea (2014R1A1A2055295).