Cancer remains one of the most lethal diseases worldwide. There is an urgent need for new drugs with novel modes of action and thus considerable research has been conducted for new anticancer drugs from natural sources, especially plants, microbes and marine organisms. Marine populations represent reservoirs of novel bioactive metabolites with diverse groups of chemical structures. This review highlights the impact of marine organisms, with particular emphasis on marine plants, algae, bacteria, actinomycetes, fungi, sponges and soft corals. Anti-cancer effects of marine natural products in in vitro and in vivo studies were first introduced; their activity in the prevention of tumor formation and the related compound-induced apoptosis and cytotoxicities were tackled. The possible molecular mechanisms behind the biological effects are also presented. The review highlights the diversity of marine organisms, novel chemical structures, and chemical property space. Finally, therapeutic strategies and the present use of marine-derived components, its future direction and limitations are discussed.

Based on many cell culture, animal and human studies, it is well known that the most challenge issue for developing polyphenolics as chemoprevention or anti-diabtetic agents is the low oral bioavailability, which may be the major reason relating to its ambiguous therapeutic effects and large inter-individual variations in clinical trials. This review intends to highlight the unscientific evaluation on the basis of the published data regarding in vitro bioactivity of polyphenols, which may sometimes mislead the researchers and to conclude that: first, bio-accessibilities values obtained in the studies for polyphenols should be highly reconsidered in accordance with the abundant newly identified circulating and excreted metabolites, with a particular attention to colonic metabolic products which are obviously contributing much more than expected to their absorptions; second, it is phenolic metabolites, which are formed in the small intestine and hepatic cells,low molecular weight catabolic products of the colonic microflora to travel around the human body in the circulatory system or reach body tissues to elicit bioactive effects. It is concluded that better performed in vivo intervention and in vitro mechanistic studies are needed to fully understand how these molecules interact with human physiological and pathological processes.

Dietary polyphenols have been widely investigated as antidiabetic agents in cell, animals, human study, and clinical trial. The number of publication (Indexed by Web of Science) on “polyphenols and diabetes” significantly increased since 2010. This review highlights the advances and opportunities of dietary polyphenols as antidiabetic agents. Dietary polyphenols prevent and manage Type 2 diabetes mellitus via the insulin‐dependent approaches, for instance, protection of pancreatic islet β‐cell, reduction of β‐cell apoptosis, promotion of β‐cell proliferation, attenuation of oxidative stress, activation of insulin signaling, and stimulation of pancreas to secrete insulin, as well as the insulin‐independent approaches including inhibition of glucose absorption, inhibition of digestive enzymes, regulation of intestinal microbiota, modification of inflammation response, and inhibition of the formation of advanced glycation end products. Moreover, dietary polyphenols ameliorate diabetic complications, such as vascular dysfunction, nephropathy, retinopathy, neuropathy, cardiomyopathy, coronary diseases, renal failure, and so on. The structure–activity relationship of polyphenols as antidiabetic agents is still not clear. The individual flavonoid or isoflavone has no therapeutic effect on diabetic patients, although the clinical data are very limited. Resveratrol, curcumin, and anthocyanins showed antidiabetic activity in human study. How hyperglycemia influences the bioavailability and bioactivity of dietary polyphenols is not well understood. An understanding of how diabetes alters the bioavailability and bioactivity of dietary polyphenols will lead to an improvement in their benefits and clinical outcomes.

Flavonoids, which are a class of polyphenols widely existing in food and medicine, have enormous pharmacological effects. The functional properties of flavonoids are mainly distributed to their anti-oxidative, anticancer, and anti-inflammatoryeffects, etc. However, flavonoids’ low bioavailability limits their clinical application, which is closely related to their intestinal absorption and metabolism. In addition, because of the short residence time of oral bioactive molecules in the stomach, low permeability and low solubility in the gastrointestinal tract, flavonoids are easy to be decomposed by the external environment and gastrointestinal tract after digestion. To tackle these obstacles, technological approaches like microencapsulation have been developed and applied for the formulation of flavonoid-enriched food products. In the light of these scientific advances, the objective of this review is to establish the structural requirements of flavonoids for appreciable anticancer, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant effects, and elucidate a comprehensive mechanism that can explain their activity. Furthermore, the novelty in application of nanotechnology for the safe delivery of flavonoids in food matrices is discussed. After a literature on the flavonoids and their health attributes, the encapsulation methods and the coating materials are presented.

One of the effective managements of diabetes mellitus, in particular, noninsulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, is to retard the absorption of glucose by inhibition of carbohydrate hydrolyzing enzymes, such as α-glucosidase and α-amylase, in the digestive organs. Currently, there is renewed interest in plant-based medicines and functional foods modulating physiological effects in the inhibition of α-glucosidase and α-amylase. Accordingly, inhibitors of α-glucosidase or α-amylase derived from various sources have also been isolated, and majority of phenolic compounds and their effects have been investigated in animals as well. As such, when the presence of α-glucosidase inhibitor in many foodstuffs was screened for, we found that vegetable seed oil also strongly inhibited α-glucosidase and α-amylase. Seed oil is an important source of liposoluble constituents with potential for inhibition of these enzymes, hence can also be used as therapeutic or functional food sources. Therefore, this review is aimed at highlighting the main liposoluble classes of α-glucosidase and α-amylase inhibitors, but it is not intended to be an exhaustive review on the subject.

Rationale: The present study reports the multifunctional anticancer activity against B16F10 melanoma cancer cells and the bioimaging ability of fluorescent nitrogen-phosphorous-doped carbon dots (NPCDs).