Colorants and cancer: A review

•In vitro molecular target of plant dye molecules against cancer cells.•The role of plant colorants in inducing cancer cell death, cell cycle arrest and blocking cell survival pathway.•The pattern of plant colorant involves in anticancer activity depends on cancer cells lines.•Plant colorant in cancer therapy through in vitro studies provide us positive stimulus for in vivo studies.

Plants have a wide array of colors in different parts of their body and have been used for multiple purposes. Several colored components (secondary metabolites) such as anthocyanins, carotenoids, apocarotenoids, anthraquinones, flavonoids, etc., were investigated for their potential therapeutic efficacy as antitumorigenic agents. These colored molecules have the ability to interfere and involved in multiple cell signaling pathway such as cell death, cell survival and cell cycle pathway. In this article, we review the different colorants and their role in killing cancer cells. In vitro molecular mechanism of colored components differs against multiple cancer cell line that provides a guide to produce a further step in in vivo cancer treatment studies. It has been observed that there are numerous colorants can be used against cancer cells. Though there is a large resource of plant colorants with antioxidant properties, very little has been exploited so far. The detailed study on colorants will improve our knowledge in cancer biology and also facilitate the use for cancer treatment in near future.