Cited by 602Redox biology and oxidative stressCancer and biochemical researchCancer, Hypoxia, and Metabolism

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 152 of the 152 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 131 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

The Two Faces of Reactive Oxygen Species in Cancer

Open access
Reczek, Colleen R., Chandel, Navdeep S.·2017·Annual Review of Cancer Biology

Abstract

Reactive oxygen species (ROS), now appreciated for their cellular signaling capabilities, have a dual role in cancer. On the one hand, ROS can promote protumorigenic signaling, facilitating cancer cell proliferation, survival, and adaptation to hypoxia. On the other hand, ROS can promote antitumorigenic signaling and trigger oxidative stress–induced cancer cell death. To hyperactivate the cell signaling pathways necessary for cellular transformation and tumorigenesis, cancer cells increase their rate of ROS production compared with normal cells. Concomitantly, in order to maintain ROS homeostasis and evade cell death, cancer cells increase their antioxidant capacity. Compared with normal cells, this altered redox environment of cancer cells may increase their susceptibility to ROS-manipulation therapies. In this review, we discuss the two faces of ROS in cancer, the potential mechanisms underlying ROS signaling, and the opposing cancer therapeutic approaches to targeting ROS.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) have dual roles in cancer: they can promote protumorigenic signaling and also trigger antitumorigenic oxidative stress–induced cancer cell death. Cancer cells increase both ROS production and antioxidant capacity, creating an altered redox environment that may make them vulnerable to ROS-manipulation therapies.

Key findings

  • Cancer cells often have increased ROS production and increased ROS scavenging compared with normal cells; this altered redox state maintains ROS homeostasis to support proliferation, survival, and hypoxia adaptation while avoiding cell death.
  • ROS promote protumorigenic signaling by oxidizing and inactivating phosphatases such as PTEN and PTP1B, activating PI3K/Akt/mTOR and MAPK/ERK pathways, stabilizing HIF-1α, and supporting NF-κB/NRF2 signaling, angiogenesis, and metastasis; mitochondrial O2− from complexes I, II, and III is among 10 mitochondrial sites of O2− production implicated in redox signaling.
  • Excessive ROS activate ASK1/JNK and ASK1/p38 signaling to induce cell cycle arrest, senescence, and cancer cell death; p53 loss or mutation, observed in more than 50% of human cancers, can permit ROS accumulation and protumorigenic signaling.
  • Therapeutic strategies include decreasing ROS with antioxidants or mitochondria-targeted antioxidants, and increasing ROS with pro-oxidants or antioxidant inhibitors; a screen of 635,000 small molecules identified three compounds that suppress complex III O2− production and prevent HIF-1α stabilization.

Methods

  • Narrative review synthesizing published literature on ROS generation, regulation, signaling, and therapeutic targeting in cancer; no primary experimental data are presented.
  • Discusses mechanistic studies, mouse models, cancer cell lines, clinical trial results, and chemical screens, but does not describe a systematic search strategy, sample size, or formal quantitative analysis.

Limitations

  • The paper states that dietary antioxidant supplementation has shown mixed results, with some large prospective clinical studies reporting increased cancer incidence, and that NRF2 inhibitor development is challenged by specificity.
  • The paper notes that normal cells, particularly stem cells, are sensitive to ROS levels, so therapies must selectively target antioxidant pathways used by cancer cells.
  • Evident from the text: as a narrative review, it lacks systematic search criteria, risk-of-bias assessment, and quantitative synthesis; many therapeutic claims rest on preclinical models and cited studies rather than new primary data.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1146/annurev-cancerbio-041916-065808

Cites

152 of 152 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

97 Not checked yet · 12 Own interpretation

Verify all 131 references — free account

Show all 80 claims

  • It may state two separate claims as one. 26
  • Probably not a substantial claim. 3
29 of 29
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Protumorigenic signaling occurs near the site of ROS production.

    “Because protumorigenic signaling occurs near the site of ROS production, the use of antioxidants or inhibitors that target the source of ROS generation may prevent tumorigenesis.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Cancer cells have higher levels of ROS production compared with normal cells.

    “Furthermore, although initially counterintuitive, pro-oxidant cancer therapy—whereby ROS production is increased or ROS scavenging is decreased, or both—is an attractive approach, given the higher levels of ROS production in cancer cells compared with normal cells.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    ROS has a causal role in promoting tumorigenesis.

    “Given the causal role of ROS in promoting tumorigenesis and the widely held belief that antioxidants are tumor suppressors, ROS-manipulation strategies have previously focused on antioxidant therapy.”
3 of 3

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

2 retracted

Show all 151 references

Research works printed but not linked: 5

  1. Buetler TM, 2004, News Physiol. Sci., 19, 120
  2. Kennedy NJ, 2003, Cell Cycle, 2, 199
  3. Safford SE, 1994, Cancer Res, 54, 4261
  4. Szatrowski TP, 1991, Cancer Res, 51, 794
  5. Yun J, 2015, BRAF, 350, 1391

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Metadata

Authors
Reczek, C. R., & Chandel, N. S.
Affiliations
Northwestern University (US)
Venue
Annual Review of Cancer Biology
Published
2017-03-06
Volume
1
Issue
1
Pages
79-98
ISSN
2472-3428 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2509946779
Cited by
602
References
151
Citations by year
2026: 72 · 2025: 50 · 2024: 55 · 2023: 78 · 2022: 134 · 2021: 97 · 2020: 53 · 2019: 37 · 2018: 21 · 2017: 5
FWCI
1.90
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Annual Review of Cancer Biology (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
  • National Institutes of Health
  • National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (T32HL076139)
  • National Cancer Institute (R01CA123067)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Redox biology and oxidative stress
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Cancer and biochemical research
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Cancer Research › Cancer, Hypoxia, and Metabolism
Keywords
reactive oxygen species, cancer, ROS signaling, oxidative stress, cancer cell death, hypoxia, antioxidant capacity, redox homeostasis, cell proliferation, cell survival

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-10, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-10-10 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review