Biochemical and pharmacotherapeutic potentials of lycopene in drug discovery

Abstract

Lycopene is a phytochemical that is present at high concentration in fruits and vegetables such as tomato, guava, watermelon, spinach, carrot, beetroot, and red grapefruit. Lycopene, just like some members of the carotenoids family, has proven to be of high medicinal, scientific, pharmaceutical, and commercial value. These features of lycopene can be attributed to its chemical structure that has been proved to be responsible for its antioxidant properties. The conjugated polyene chains are responsible for its unstable and electrophilic attacks against free radicals because this double π electron system reduces the energy requirement for the oxidation of electrons in each double bond. This reactivity contributes to the efficacy of lycopene as the basis of its antioxidant activity in biological systems and its efficacy as a chemopreventive. This chapter presents this in details while emphasizing more on the therapeutic importance of lycopene.