Spices and Cancer: Looking for Evidence

Spices are defined as seeds, fruits, roots, barks, berries, buds or other vegetable substances essentially used for flavoring, coloring or preserving food. Spices have been used since ancient times, but only in the nineteenth century their use has started to be scientifically investigated as a potential therapeutic tool. Consequently they were also usedin the fight against cancer. It is worth to pointing out that cancer is the second cause of death in the world and the number of new cases is expected to rise by about 70% over the next 2 decades. Among spices with proven anticancer effects in preclinical models, the most important seem to be basil, caraway, cardamom, cinnamon, clove, coriander, cumin, curcumin, dill, garlic, ginger, ginseng, oregano, pepper, rosemary, saffron, thyme, wasabi. It is important to consider that compounds derived from spices show usually low bioavailability; nonetheless many procedures have been applied to overcome this problem. This is particularly true for curcumin, to which many different approaches revealed beneficial, such as molecular complexation with pH sensitive cationic copolymer, nanocarrier loading, microparticles.

It is well known that plant secondary metabolites are an infinite source of new potential drugs, even in spices. In this regard, manyextracts or compounds have been evaluated for their antiinflammatory,antioxidant or anti-proliferative effects. They have been extracted from vegetables, fruit, trees, herbs and spices, relying on traditional and ethnopharmacological use made by indigenous people, where these natural products were found.