Functional Foods in Cancer Prevention and Therapy

Yearul Kabir, Yearul Kabir

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780128165386
• Topic: Technik & Maschinenbau
• Subtopic: Lebensmittelwissenschaft

Functional Foods in Cancer Prevention and Therapy presents the wide range of functional foods associated with the prevention and treatment of cancer. In recent decades, researchers have made progress in our understanding of the association between functional food and cancer, especially as it relates to cancer treatment and prevention. Specifically, substantial evidence from epidemiological, clinical and laboratory studies show that various food components may alter cancer risk, the prognosis after cancer onset, and the quality of life after cancer treatment. The book documents the therapeutic roles of well-known functional foods and explains their role in cancer therapy.

The book presents complex cancer patterns and evidence of the effective ways to control cancers with the use of functional foods. This book will serve as informative reference for researchers focused on the role of food in cancer prevention and physicians and clinicians involved in cancer treatment.

• Discusses the role of functional foods in cancer therapy
• Presents research-based evidence of the role of herbs and bioactive foods in cancer treatment and prevention
• Provides the most current, concise, scientific information regarding the efficacy of functional foods in preventing cancer and improving the quality of life
• Explores antioxidants, phytochemicals, nutraceuticals, herbal medicine and supplements in relation to cancer prevention and treatment
• Contains a clinical approach to the use of functional foods to prevent and treat cancer
• Emphasizes the role and mechanism of functional foods, including the characterization of active compounds on cancer prevention and treatment

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Natural remedies and functional foods as angiogenesis modulators

Mehmet Varol Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Faculty of Science, Kotekli Campus, Mugla Sitki Kocman University, Mugla, Turkey

Abstract

The development of effective drugs and treatment strategies has great importance in keeping the human body healthy due to the existence of many diseases that do not have appropriate medical treatments available. Great scientific endeavors and government financial support, therefore, have been used to discover and design novel functional molecules and treatment modalities. Also, it is widely conceded that natural remedies and functional foods are the lead and key sources for patient welfare due to the heavy side effects of conventional treatment strategies and synthetic chemotherapeutics. Furthermore, angiogenesis is considered a key and common target for many diseases that need new capillaries or have capillary defects. We therefore would like to draw the attention of scientists more to natural remedies and functional foods that serve as angiogenesis modulators.

Keywords

Angiogenesis; Vasculogenesis; Natural products; Chinese herbs; Traditional medicine

Angiogenesis definition and background

Vertebrate cells need an appropriate microenvironment surrounded by blood capillaries to ensure maintaining their normal functions and the convenient microenvironment that formed a balanced composition of oxygen and nutrient substances, and metabolic wastes resulting from the vital activities of the cells is ensured by the cardiovascular or circulatory system (Pittman, 2013). The system is established via two mechanisms: vasculogenesis and angiogenesis. Both these mechanisms are essential for the formation of a vascular network in the early stages of embryonic development as well as in the rest of the lifespan (Drake, 2003). Although angiogenesis is defined as a complex process of expansion and remodeling of a preexisting vascular structure, vasculogenesis refers to the de novo blood vessel constitution accomplished by the de novo generation of endothelial cells, which includes a series of differentiation processes from mesodermal progenitors into angioblasts and then from angioblasts into endothelial cells (Patan, 2004; Risau and Flamme, 1995). In normal physiology, angiogenesis has a major role in tissue growth, healing, reproduction, and development of the fetus during pregnancy (Felmeden et al., 2003). All cells in the body desperately need oxygen to maintain their vital activities within homeostasis and the diffusion distance of oxygen within the tissues is restricted to 100–200 μm (Grimes et al., 2014; Varol, 2017). When a cell stays away from the capillary blood vessels farther than the appropriate diffusion distance of oxygen, it is inevitable that physiological stresses such as hypoxia along with starvation and acidification occur within the cell (Wenger et al., 2015; Carmeliet and Jain, 2000). Therefore, a cell that is deprived of oxygen can release proangiogenic growth factors, along with other positive regulation proteins such as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta), fibroblast growth factor (FGF), epidermal growth factor (EGF), matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) enzymes, angiopoietins, and integrin proteins to initiate the formation of the surrounding blood capillaries (Weis and Cheresh, 2011; Salajegheh, 2016; Carmeliet, 2005). There are also angiogenesis suppression (antiangiogenic) factors such as angiopoietin-2, platelet factor-4, thrombospondin-1 and -2, endostatin, angiostatin, osteopontin, collagen, kininogens, and the tissue factor pathway inhibitor (TFPI) as well as angiogenesis-inducing (angiogenic) factors in the body (Ribatti, 2009; Mousa and Davis, 2017). The regulation of the balance between angiogenesis activators and inhibitors in the body provides an angiogenic switch that affects the formation of capillaries, and the direc...