Flavonoids as anticancer therapies: A systematic review of clinical trials

Flavonoids have been proposed as potential chemotherapeutic agents because they are toxic against cancer cells but not harmful to healthy cells. This systematic review analyzed flavonoid effectiveness in human cancer chemotherapy. Overall, 22 phase II and 1 phase III clinical trials (PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science) that used flavonoids as a single agent or combined with other therapeutics against hematopoietic/lymphoid or solid cancer published by January 2019 were selected for analysis. Flavopiridol was the most commonly used flavonoid (at a dose of 50-mg/m² IV) for all tumor types. Aside from the relatively low rate of complete response (CR) or partial response (PR) with any administration protocol, flavonoids showed higher positive outcomes for hematopoietic and lymphoid tissues (140 patients with CR and 88 with PR among 615 patients in 11 trials) than for solid tumors (4 patients with CR and 21 with PR among 525 patients in 12 trials). However, because of the high variety in administration schedule, more studies are needed to further understand how flavonoids can promote positive outcomes for cancer patients.