Therapeutic Role of Carotenoids in Blood Cancer: Mechanistic Insights and Therapeutic Potential

Blood cancers are characterized by pathological disorders causing uncontrolled hematological cell division. Various strategies were previously explored for the treatment of blood cancers, including chemotherapy, Car-T therapy, targeting chimeric antigen receptors, and platelets therapy. However, all these therapies pose serious challenges that limit their use in blood cancer therapy, such as poor metabolism. Furthermore, the solubility and stability of anticancer drugs limit efficacy and bio-distribution and cause toxicity. The isolation and purification of natural killer cells during Car-T cell therapy is a major challenge. To cope with these challenges, treatment strategies from phyto-medicine scaffolds have been evaluated for blood cancer treatments. Carotenoids represent a versatile class of phytochemical that offer therapeutic efficacy in the treatment of cancer, and specifically blood cancer. Carotenoids, through various signaling pathways and mechanisms, such as the activation of AMPK, expression of autophagy biochemical markers (p62/LC3-II), activation of Keap1-Nrf2/EpRE/ARE signaaling pathway, nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells (NF-κB), increased level of reactive oxygen species, cleaved poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (c-PARP), c-caspase-3, -7, decreased level of Bcl-xL, cycle arrest at the G0/G1 phase, and decreasing STAT3 expression results in apoptosis induction and inhibition of cancer cell proliferation. This review article focuses the therapeutic potential of carotenoids in blood cancers, addressing various mechanisms and signaling pathways that mediate their therapeutic efficacy.