The number of cancer cases worldwide keeps growing unstoppably, despite the undeniable
advances achieved by basic research and clinical practice. Urologic tumors, including some as
prevalent as prostate, bladder or kidney tumors, are no exceptions to this rule. Moreover, the fact
that many of these tumors are detected in early stages lengthens the duration of their treatment, with
a significant increase in health care costs. In this scenario, prevention offers the most cost-effective
long-term strategy for the global control of these diseases. Although specialized diets are not the
only way to decrease the chances to develop cancer, epidemiological evidence support the role of
certain plant-derived foods in the prevention of urologic cancer. In many cases, these plants are rich
in antiangiogenic phytochemicals, which could be responsible for their protective or angiopreventive
properties. Angiogenesis inhibition may contribute to slow down the progression of the tumor at very
different stages and, for this reason, angiopreventive strategies could be implemented at different
levels of chemoprevention, depending on the targeted population. In this review, epidemiological
evidence supporting the role of certain plant-derived foods in urologic cancer prevention are presented,
with particular emphasis on their content in bioactive phytochemicals that could be used in
the angioprevention of cancer.
