Oxidative stress and the unfulfilled promises of antioxidant agents.
It is well known that aging and its associated diseases, including cancer, are triggered by oxidative damage to biological macromolecules. However, antioxidant compounds are still disappointingly distant from any clinical application, so that Jim Watson has declared that antioxidant supplementation may have caused more cancers than it has prevented Watson J ((2013) Oxidants, antioxidants and the current incurability of metastatic cancers Open Biol 3 DOI: 10.1098/rsob.120144). To clarify this paradox, here, we describe the mechanisms of oxidative stress focusing in particular on redox balance and physiological oxidative signals.
Department of Experimental Oncology, Institute of Oncology, Via Adamello 16, 20139, Milan, Italy.
Marco
M
Giorgio
antioxidant; cancer; mitochondrial respiration; oxidative stress; reactive oxygen species; redox signalling