140-148 Sultana

Over the past decade, interest in evaluating oriental medicinal herbs and edible phytoproducts for use in cancer preventive strategies is encouraging and emerging as an acceptable approach for controlling the cancer incidence in many developing as well as developed countries (Kellof, 2000). Several experimental evidence for all common cancer sites have indicated that intake of fruits and vegetables and a number of other dietary items are associated with decreased cancer incidence (Morse and Stoner, 1996). These potential agents can either abolish or delay the development of cancer by interfering with one or more steps in the process of carcinogenesis such as preventing the activation of carcinogen, by increasing detoxification or by blocking the interaction of ultimate carcinogen with cellular macromolecules, or by suppressing the clonal expansion of neoplastic cells (Morse and Stoner, 1996; Tanaka, 1994). The potential of using medicinal herbs as cancer chemoprotective nutraceuticals and functional foods is promising. Butea monosperma (Palash), traditionally employed intensively as folklore remedy for a wide spectrum of liver diseases in India. It has a wider array of uses than any other Chemoprevention by Butea Monosperma of Hepatic Carcinogenesis and Oxidative Damage in Male Wistar Rats