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On December 23rd, 1971, President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act and invested more than $ 100 million “to launch an intensive campaign to find a cure for cancer”. Today, despite these considerable efforts, cancer still remains a very aggressive silent killer all over the world. Moreover, over the last decade, novel synthetic chemotherapeutic agents currently in use in the clinics did not succeed in fulfilling their expectations even though they are very cost-intensive. In parallel, there is increasing evidence for the potential of plant-derived compounds on the inhibition of different steps of tumor genesis and associated inflammatory processes, underlining the importance of these products in cancer prevention and therapy. This review summarizes the impact of selected natural compounds on the eight major alterations, known as the cancer hallmarks, and also on their two enabling characteristics that were …