A review about the development of fucoidan in antitumor activity: Progress and challenges

• The detailed antitumor molecular mechanisms related to fucoidan are elaborated.
• The factors affecting anticancer effect of fucoidan are summarized and discussed clearly.
• The challenges for the further development of fucoidan are analyzed and summarized.
• The structural characteristics of anticancer effect of fucoidan and whether these experiments are investigated in vitro or in vivo are summarized.

Fucoidan is composed of l-fucose, sulfate groups and one or more small proportions of d-xylose, d-mannose, d-galactose, l-rhamnose, arabinose, glucose, d-glucuronic acid and acetyl groups in different kinds of brown seaweeds. Many reports have demonstrated that fucoidan has antitumor activities on various cancers. However, until now, few reviews have discussed the antitumor activity of fucoidan and few reports have summarized detailed molecular mechanisms of its actions and antitumor challenges of fucoidan specially. In this review, the antitumor signaling pathway mechanisms related to fucoidan are elucidated as much detail as possible. Besides, the factors affecting the anticancer effects of fucoidan, the structural characteristics of fucoidan with anticancer activities and the challenges for the further development of fucoidan are also summarized and evaluated. The existing similar and different conclusions are summarized in an attempt to provide guidelines to help further research, and finally contribute to go into market as chemotherapeumtics.