Chemotherapeutic Potential of the Chemopreventive Phytoalexin Resveratrol

The last couple of decades have seen a tremendous increase in interest in the biological properties of natural products as a means to identify novel small compounds that could have potential in clinical medicine. To that end, flavonoids- and flavonoid-like compounds percolate to the top due to their presence in diet constituents and reported beneficial effects on diverse biological processes and disease conditions. As such, the plant polyphenolic antibiotic resveratrol, found in grapes, nuts and wines, has been the focus of many studies aimed at understanding its full range of health beneficial effects. The interest in this compound stems from the earlier observations describing the therapeutic benefits of roots of the oriental medicinal plant from which resveratrol was first isolated. Being a constituent of grapes and wines, the initial work was focused on linking resveratrol to the beneficial cardiovascular effects of moderate wine intake, however, since its reported cancer chemopreventive activity in a murine model of carcinogenesis, there has been a heightened interest in understanding the anti-cancer activity of resveratrol. As a result, a substantial amount of data strongly suggests that resveratrol could affect the process of carcinogenesis through a variety of different mechanisms in different tumor cell types. However, a couple of recent reports provide evidence to the contrary. This critical review attempts to summarize some of these findings and discuss the clinical potential of this compound or its derivatives in the light of the recent conflicting reports.