The power of phytochemicals in cancer chemoprevention through multi-target modulation of oncogenic signaling pathways

The conventional cancer therapies like synthetic drug treatment, radiotherapy, and surgery are often associated with serious side effects including cancer recurrence and drug resistance. In contrast, plant-derived compounds offer a multitargeted and potentially less toxic approach that may complement traditional cancer therapies. Ethnopharmacological evidence, together with preclinical and clinical studies, has demonstrated substantial cytotoxic potential of plant extracts and isolated compounds against different human cancer cell lines. Medicinal plants are a rich source of bioactive compounds, including alkaloids, flavonoids, terpenoids and polyphenols which may inhibit angiogenesis, induce apoptosis, inhibit cell proliferation, and cell cycle progression, reverse drug resistance, interfere with microtubule formation, act on topoisomerase targets and modulate key signaling pathways like JAK-STAT, NRF2-KEAP1 and Wnt/β-catenin. Furthermore, these compounds can activate the immune system while also inducing epigenetic alterations like histone acetylation and DNA methylation to restore normal gene expression. The review examines recent literature (2020-2025) on phytochemicals derived from botanical sources that have demonstrated significant anticancer effects with particular emphasis on their molecular mechanism of action to understand the implications of these findings in the future treatment and prevention of cancer. Although there is an interest in the field of cancer chemoprevention using natural compounds because of the phytochemicals intriguing anti-cancer properties, comprehensive mechanistic investigations and well-designed clinical research is required to support the compounds therapeutic usage for chemoprevention.