Red wine polyphenols for cancer prevention.

Conventional cancer therapies, the second leading cause of death worldwide, result in serious side effects and, at best, merely extend the patient's lifespan by a few years. Searching for effective prevention is of high priority in both basic and clinical sciences. In recent decades natural products have been considered to be an important source of cancer chemopreventive agents. Red wine polyphenols, which consisted of various powerful antioxidants such as flavonoids and stilbenes, have been implicated in cancer prevention and that promote human health without recognizable side effects. Since resveratrol, a major component of red wine polyphenols, has been studied and reviewed extensively for its chemopreventive activity to interfere with the multi-stage carcinogenesis, this review focuses on recent progress in studies on cancer chemopreventive activities of red wine polyphenol extracts and fractions as well as other red wine polyphenols, like procyanidin B5 analogues and myricetin.