Over the past few decades, phytochemicals widely present in edible plants have exhibited compelling positive biological impact on human health, including treating some cancers. In some cases, metabolites and artificially modified products of these natural compounds have shown better chemopreventive effects than their natural counterparts. Along with direct chemopreventive strategies using phytochemicals to treat cancer by leading to cell cycle arrest, autophagy and apoptosis, natural compounds have been shown to reverse adverse epigenetic regulation, including altering DNA methylation and histone modification, modulating miRNA expression, promoting expression of phase II enzyme for detoxification, balancing inflammation responses, recovering circadian rhythm from misalignment, and modifying gut microbiota. These have all become part of indirect but effective and novel strategies in cancer prevention using phytochemicals. Therefore, in this review, we are going to summarize some findings of phytochemicals in cancer chemoprevention via several distinct strategies, both to highlight promising treatments and to encourage new ideas for future studies.

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植物化学物质在癌症化学预防方面的最新进展

在过去的几十年里，广泛存在于可食用植物中的植物化学物质对人类健康表现出令人信服的积极生物学影响，包括治疗某些癌症。在某些情况下，这些天然化合物的代谢物和人工修饰产物比它们的天然对应物表现出更好的化学预防作用。除了使用植物化学物质通过导致细胞周期停滞、自噬和细胞凋亡来治疗癌症的直接化学预防策略外，天然化合物已被证明可以逆转不利的表观遗传调控，包括改变 DNA 甲基化和组蛋白修饰、调节 miRNA 表达、促进 II 期酶的表达用于解毒、平衡炎症反应、从错位中恢复昼夜节律以及改变肠道微生物群。这些都已成为使用植物化学物质预防癌症的间接但有效且新颖的策略的一部分。因此，在这篇综述中，我们将通过几种不同的策略总结植物化学物质在癌症化学预防中的一些发现，既突出有前途的治疗方法，又鼓励未来研究的新思路。