Pro- and Antioxidant Effects of Vitamin C in Cancer in correspondence to Its Dietary and Pharmacological Concentrations

Table 1

Anticancer effects induced by dietary (D) or pharmacological (P) concentrations of vitamin C or its derivatives. Abbreviations are explained in the main text. Question marks indicate values that are interpolated from experimental data.

Cancer	Effect	Mechanism	Concentration	Reference
Many human cancer cell lines	Cell death	Cu(I)- or Fe(II)-dependent H2O2 formation, oxidative stress	P	6-10
CRC with KRAS or BRAF mutations, human cell lines, and mouse xenografts	Cell death	Inactivation of GAPDH, depletion of glutathione, ROS increase, decreased ATP, energetic crisis	P	75
AML human cell line	Apoptosis, inhibition of proliferation	ERK phosphorylation, Raf1/MAPK inhibition	P/D(?)	57
Breast or colon human cell line	Cell death	Changes in metabolomic profile, NAD deficiency	P	79
Gastric cancer patients, cell lines	Inhibition of proliferation	Selective upregulation of TMEFE2	D	81
Many cancer cell lines	Killing cancer cells by synergistic or additive action with anticancer drugs, including bleomycin, sorafenib, and auranofin	DNA double-strand break induction; modification of redox balance	P/D	85-87
All cancers	Killing cancer cells by stimulation of the immune system	Fas-induced apoptosis, reduction of the activity of caspase-3, caspase-8, and caspase-10, reduced ROS levels, and increased permeability of the mitochondrial membrane as well as HIF-1/2 activation in monocytes; NK stimulation by IFN-γ activation	P/D	3, 93-96
Colorectal cancer	Killing cancer cells by targeting their epigenetic profile	Synergistic or additive effects with DNA-demethylating drugs, TET2 activation	P/D	103
All cancers	Tumor inhibition by eradication of cancer stem-like cells	Synthetic lethality with targeting glycolysis; TET2 activation; TET1 inhibition; oxidative DNA damage; activation of the MLH1/c-Abl/p73 signaling; inhibition of pluripotency factors, incl. OCT4A, SOX2, and NANOG	P/D(?)	114-121
All cancers	Metastasis inhibition	Inhibition of MMP secretion; inhibition of hyaluronidase and hyaluronan lyase; increasing efficacy of BET1; upregulation of HDAC1; inhibition epithelial-mesenchymal transition	P/D	127-137