323 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. M. Jafari et al. (eds.), Nutraceuticals and Cancer Signaling, Food Bioactive Ingredients, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74035-1_13 Chapter 13 Saffron (Crocins) Against Cancer Mohammed Bhia, Huda Fatima Rajani, Niloufar Mohammadkhani, and Seid Mahdi Jafari Abstract Saffron is a spice which is isolated from the dried stigmas of Crocus sativus L. with plentiful of benefcial pharmacological effects including chemopre- ventive and anticancer properties that are mainly linked to the rich presence of carotenoids in particular crocin, crocetin, picrocrocin and safranal. The mechanism of carotenoids chemopreventive features includes apoptosis, antioxidant activity, improving cell differentiation, modulating carcinogen metabolism, immune modu- lation, regulating the progression of cell cycle and growth, stimulating the commu- nications of cell-to-cell gap junctions, and inhibiting cell proliferation. Numerous preclinical studies were performed on cancer animal models and cancerous cell lines which confrmed the favorable anticancer properties of saffron on a variety of cancers. Additionally, saffron has been shown to provide protective effects against toxicities associated with several cancer chemotherapeutic agents. Moreover, the key saffron compounds crocin and crocetin can have a synergetic effect when used with other conventional anticancer drugs, thus, improving the effcacy of these drugs in cancer therapy. Furthermore, several studies encapsulated crocin, crocetin, or safranal within nanocarriers to enhance their effectiveness in cancer therapy by overcoming physicochemical limitations. In the present chapter, we aim to give an overview of the mechanism involved in the promising anticancer effects of saffron M. Bhia Student Research Committee, School of Pharmacy, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Nanomedicine Research Association (NRA), Universal Scientifc Education and Research Network (USERN), Tehran, Iran H. F. Rajani Department of Medical Biotechnology, School of Advanced Technologies in Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran N. Mohammadkhani Department of Clinical Biochemistry, School of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran S. M. Jafari (*) Department of Food Materials and Process Design Engineering, Gorgan University of Agricultural Science and Natural Resources, Gorgan, Iran e-mail: smjafari@gau.ac.ir