Metabolomics of cancer cell cultures to assess the effects of dietary phytochemicals
Cancer is a multi-factorial disease and is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Dietary phytochemicals have been used for the treatment of cancer throughout history due to their safety, low
toxicity, and general availability. Several studies have been performed to elucidate the effects of dietary phytochemicals on cancer metabolism, and many molecular targets of phytochemicals have been
discovered. In spite of remarkable progress, their effects on cancer metabolism have not yet been fully clarified. Recent developments in metabolomics allowed to probe much further the metabolism of cancer,
highlighting altered metabolic pathways and offering a new powerful tool to investigate cancer disease. In this review, we discuss the main metabolic alterations of cancer cells and the potentiality of
phytochemicals as promising modulators of cancer metabolism. We will focus on the application of nuclear magnetic resonance-based metabolomics on breast and hepatocellular cancer cell lines to
evaluate the impact of curcumin and resveratrol on cancer metabolome with the aim to demonstrate the premise of this approach to provide useful information for a better understanding of impact of diet
components on cancer disease.