Use of selenium as micronutrients and for future anticancer drug: a review

The inherent duality of selenium can be the stepping stone to generate selenium based front line chemotherapeutic drug against ever evolving disease landscape of cancer. Not only as a therapeutic agent, but also in supportive care this essential micronutrient may be a good supplement to balance redox homeostasis and boost up patients immunity. Many in vitro, in vivo and clinical studies have generated a lot of useful information about anticancer properties of this trace element, which can be used as backbone in these aspects. The knowledge about speciation, distribution and compartmentalization of selenium metabolites, their pharmacokinetics, regulation of selenogenome and selenoproteome function, genomic variants and epigenetic effects are to be integrated to achieve the novel target. Advancement of bioinformatics and new technologies can be very much helpful in this regard.