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The invasiveness and low survivability on the part of patients associated with cancer continues to raise global concern. Different approaches have been used in the treatment and restoration of normalcy in cancer patients. However, most of the therapeutic strategies employed are challenged with high cost, low efficacy, high toxicity, and multiple side effects. In recent times, emergent studies have provided evidence that functional foods and their bioactive components serve roles as potential agents in the prevention and treatment of cancers. Moreover, global interest has focused on how this chemoprevention potential of functional foods can be explored as plant-based medicines for drug development. Although, the literature is replete with the mechanism of chemoprevention elicited by individual components of functional foods, there are limited reports on their overall anti-cancer mechanisms. Therefore, this systematic review aims to unify the anti-cancer mechanisms of functional foods in cervical, breast, and liver cancers which were selected due to their high incidence and mortality globally. We reviewed articles from NCBI/PUBMED from 2010 until February 2020. Three different search words used include “Functional food and cervical cancer”; “Functional foods and breast cancer”; “Functional foods and hepatocarcinoma”. Consequently, 434 scientific papers resulted from the three search words. However, after applying the inclusion/exclusion criteria, 37 articles were selected: 14 on cervical cancer, 10 on breast cancer, and 13 on hepatocellular carcinoma. We subsequently emphasize the anti-cancer mechanisms of various functional foods in the studies selected and these include induction of apoptosis, cell cycle arrest, disruption of microtubular network, downregulation of anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 family expression, induction of autophagy, modulation of signaling cascades, ROS generation, and suppression of specific genes. Therefore, functional foods possess effective chemoprevention mechanisms which can be explored in drug development. Keywords: Cervical cancer, Breast cancer, Liver cancer, Cancer prevention, Functional foods, Bioactive compounds

: Drug reposition, or repurposing, has become a promising strategy in therapeutics due to its advantages in several aspects of drug therapy. General drug development is expensive and can take more than 10 years to go through the designing, development, and necessary approval steps. However, established drugs have already overcome these steps and thus a potential candidate may be already available decreasing the risks and costs involved. Viruses invade cells, usually provoking biochemical changes, leading to tissue damage, alteration of normal physiological condition in organisms and can even result in death. Inside the cell, the virus finds the machinery necessary for its multiplication, as for instance the protein quality control system, which involves chaperones and Hsps (heat shock proteins) that, in addition to physiological functions, help in the stabilization of viral proteins. Recently, many inhibitors of Hsp90 have been developed as therapeutic strategies against diseases such as the Hsp90 inhibitors used in anticancer therapy. Several shreds of evidence indicate that these inhibitors can also be used as therapeutic strategies against viruses. Therefore, since a drug treatment for COVID-19 is urgently needed, this review aims to discuss the potential use of Hsp90 inhibitors in the treatment of this globally threatening disease.