Main description:

Today's consumers are looking for food products with health-promoting roles in addition to nutritional benefits. With current research showing that nutraceuticals and functional foods rich in specific bioactives may have chemopreventative effects, these products are increasingly popular. However, while much in the literature supports the health-promoting features of these foods, few texts focus on their bioactive agents and their mode of action in cancer signaling.

Nutraceuticals and Cancer Signalling: Clinical Aspects and Mode of Action explains the link between nutraceuticals and cancer in terms of clinical trials and modes of action. This book gives an overview of common cancers and their mechanisms, and the most common functional foods and their bioactive components. Individual chapters focus on specific functional foods--including tomatoes, garlic, honey, tea, yoghurt, and many more--their prominent bioactive compounds, and their mode of action in cancer signaling and chemoprevention. Recent findings on cancer-prevention roles of different vitamins and minerals are also discussed.

For food scientists, nutritionists, and pharmaceutical experts looking to understand how functional foods can play a role in fighting cancer, this text serves as a one-stop reference.

Contents:

Part I: An overview of cancer and its mechanisms

Chapter 1. Cancer overview (impact of cancer worldwide, main causes of cancer, most common types of cancer, main treatments) (Seyed/Ana)

Chapter 2. Mechanisms involved in carcinogenesis (e.g. apoptosis) (Devi)

Part II: Functional foods/nutraceuticals as chemopreventive agents

(identification of molecular targets of nutraceuticals; synthetic analogues of chemopreventive agents, clinical trials already performed)

Chapter 3. Tomato (lycopene and -carotene) (Monica Rosa)

Chapter 4. Aromatic plants (essential oils) (Tarun)

Chapter 5. Bee propolis (caffeic acid phenethyl ester) (Kamal)

Chapter 6. Brown algae (fucoxanthin) (Muhammad Ajmal)

Chapter 7. Cruciferous vegetables (indole-3-carbinol, Isothiocyanates) (Luigi)

Chapter 8. Crustacea (carotenoids namely astaxanthin) (Renald)

Chapter 9. Curcuma (curcumin) (Kamal)

Chapter 10. Fruits and vegetables (flavonoids, namely quercetin and resveratrol; dietary fibers, carotenoids) (Davide)

Chapter 11. Garlic (allylsulfur compounds) (Ipek)

Chapter 12. Ginger (gingerols and 6-shogaol) (Sinem)

Chapter 13. Saffron (crocin) (Mahdi)

Chapter 14. Olive leaf (oleuropein) (Mahdi)

Chapter 15. Honey (Fazlullah)

Chapter 16. Soybeans and phyto-estrogen rich foods (genistein, daidzein) (Azadeh)

Chapter 17. Tea (catechins including (-)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate) (Hari)

Chapter 18. Yoghurt and fermented foods (probiotics) (Roja)

Part III: The role of nutrients in the prevention of cancer

Chapter 19. Vitamins (namely C, D, E) (Mirele)

Chapter 20. Minerals (namely selenium) (Antoni)

Chapter 21. Dietary fibers/beta-glucan (Maria)

Chapter 22. Omega-3 fatty acids (Dunja)