The research status and prospect of cancer chemoprevention by Chinese medical materials

The theory of "Preventive Treatment of Disease" is the core theory of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which is in agreement with the cancer chemoprevention in modern medicine. The major advantages of applying Chinese herbs as agents to prevent cancers are as following: Firstly, almost all the Chinese herbs are homology of foods, so they have no or little side effects and toxicities. This is beneficial for the long-term prevention of cancers. Secondly, the compositions of TCM herbs are multiple, so the mechanisms of the actions involve multi-targets and multi-pathway. This is in accord with the multi-factors and complicated mechanisms of cancer occurrence. So screening effective cancer chemoprevention agents in Chinese medicinal materials is a great way to realize the cancer prevention. In this paper, we summarized the research on cancer chemoprevention in recent years, hoping to offer references for future work.