Bioactive compounds from brown seaweeds: Phloroglucinol,fucoxanthin and fucoidan as promising therapeutic agents against breast cancer

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers among women and its incidence tends to increase year by year. Chemotherapy is an effective treatment for many types of cancer, however its toxicity in normal cells and acquired tumor resistance to the drug used are considered as the main barriers. New strategies have been proposed to increase the success of anticancer drugs namely it combination with natural dietary compounds, decreasing drug dose administered and reducing its toxicity to normal cells. Seaweeds are rich in bioactive compounds and, in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Japanese folk medicine are used to “treat” tumors. Attending to the attractive biological effects of some seaweed several efforts have been made to isolate the bioactive compounds and explore its action mechanisms. Phloroglucinol, fucoxanthin and fucoidan are bioactive compounds present in brown seaweed showing chemopreventive and chemotherapeutic effects against cancer. Several mechanisms namely antioxidant, cell cycle arrest, induction of cell death and inhibition of metastasis and angiogenesis have been mentioned as responsible for it anticancer activity. Beside the promising biological effects of these compounds, synergistic effects with cytotoxic drugs have been less explored. This review focuses on the potential protective and therapeutic effect – mainly against breast cancer – of the bioactive compounds phloroglucinol, fucoxanthin and fucoidan present in the brown seaweeds. Current knowledge about interaction between each of these compounds and the conventional anticancer drugs and the further research opportunities are discussed.