Anticancer Potentials of Phytochemicals from Some Indigenous Food and Medicinal Plants of West Africa

Many indigenous West African plants have been employed as local remedies for various human ailments in the traditional medicine of the region, and as nutritional sources for countless generations [1-3]. Isolation and characterization of the chemical structures for phytochemicals from useful indigenous plants have however been undertaken only for a minimal fraction, largely because the modern techniques of chromatography and mass spectroscopy have been exploited by African scientists relatively recently [4-6]. The significance of the latter development has been to greatly enhance an understanding of the molecular mechanisms of action for these isolated compounds as pharmacological agents. In particular, such knowledge has been applied in the present discussion to identify phytochemicals from indigenous West African plants with potential anticancer activities, based on their structure-activity relationships to known active compounds – an outcome totally unanticipated by the organic chemists who merely isolated and characterized these phytochemicals, or whose main focus was on other biological activities.