Foods rich in bioactive plant compounds have attracted more and more attention in cancer chemoprevention strategies because of their high efficiency, safety, good tolerance, high feasibility and low cost. Radish glucosinolate is a natural plant active ingredient, which mainly exists in cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli.

Radish glucosinolate is found to be a promising chemopreventive drug, because it can not only prevent many cancers, such as breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, skin cancer, lung cancer, gastric cancer and esophageal cancer, but also prevent cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases and diabetes.

Preclinical experiments have proved that sulforaphane is the main component with anti-cancer function in broccoli, and broccoli buds are mainly used in clinical experiments because they are rich in sulforaphane or its biosynthetic precursor sulforaphane.

A large number of pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies related to sulforaphane compounds or sulforaphane-rich foods have been completed. Radish sulfur can affect a variety of target proteins in cells.

Nrf2-Keap 1 pathway is the key signal pathway affected by sulforaphane, and sulforaphane plays a wide range of pharmacological effects in animal models by regulating this signal pathway.

This paper summarizes the preclinical research results of sulforaphane, and points out the progress and challenges of clinical chemoprevention through sulforaphane or sulforaphane-rich foods.