1 INTRODUCTION
Phytochemicals have exhibited great potential in prevention & treatment
of HNC. Use of biomarker to identify patients, which are better suited
for chemoprevention can lead to huge advancement in chemo preventive
research. To develop a broad range of targeted therapeutics,
understanding the different molecular pathways associated with HNC
oncogenesis is very important. Genetic alterations in body fluids, tumor
tissue and serum could be used for early detection and treatment of HNC.
Current common treatment modalities for HNC are surgery, radiotherapy,
and chemotherapy. Although recent advances in cancer imaging (Magnetic
Resonance Imaging [MRI], Positron emission tomography [PET],
Computer Tomography [CT)] and computer software treatment plan have
benefitted the radiation delivery technology, yet non specificity and
toxicity to normal cells result in low response rates. From the last few
decades, to reduce treatment related toxicity and to increase patient
survival, combination of two or more phytochemicals or phytochemical
with radio/chemotherapy at lower doses has come up as a promising
therapeutic approach. The main aim supporting this combinatorial
approach is, reduction of adverse side effect by other therapies and
increase the anticancer efficacy at lower doses.
Recently some clinical trials using numerous combinations of
phytochemicals with standard chemotherapeutic drugs and radiation have
been done to assess the therapeutic potential of phytochemicals as
adjunct for prevention and treatment of HNC patients (Duarte et
al. , 2010 Leoncini et al. , 2015 Shrotriya et al. , 2015).
Therefore current study reviews the role of phytochemicals in HNC
pathogenesis, management and treatment and discusses the ability of
these phytochemicals to act as adjuvants along with existing HNC
therapies. Further individual phytochemicals, their synthetic analogues
/nano formulations already under preclinical and clinical studies and
the challenges faced in their translation from bench to bedside are also
discussed.