Genomics-Based Identification of Molecular Mechanisms behind the Cancer Preventive Action of Phytochemicals: Potential and Challenges

摘要

High intake of dietary phytochemicals, non-nutritive compounds found in vegetables and fruits, has been asso-ciated with a decreased risk of various types of cancer. With the introduction of new "omics" research approaches, tech-nologies providing large scale and holistic data on biological responses to dietary or environmental factors, our under-standing of the molecular mechanisms of the preventive action of individual phytochemicals has started to increase rap-idly. This understanding contributes to the biological plausibility of the observed link between fruit and vegetable con-sumption and decreased cancer risk in epidemiological studies. In this mini-review, we present an overview of the charac-teristics of the different "omics" techniques, with emphasis on transcriptomics, epigenetics, and the analysis of single nu-cleotide polymorphisms, and evaluate their implications in studies on dietary phytochemicals. We focus particularly on studies in human cell cultures in vitro and in human population studies and discuss the potential and different challenges offered by each technique, as well as future perspectives on applications of these new tools in nutritional genomics re-search.