Abstract: Lycopene has powerful antioxidative ability, and can effectively reduce the incidence of cancer, angiocardiopathy and other diseases. Nowadays, lycopene becomes a hot topic in functional food and phamaceutical research. However, lycopene is easy to be degraded and isomerized, its poor stability has greatly limited the research and application of lycopene. This article reviews the molecular structure and physiological functions of lycopene, analyzes the relationship of lycopene and diseases, summarizes the progress of the lycopene stability research, and explores the feasibility to solve the technical problems of keeping the lycopene stability in applications.

Key words: lycopene, functions, stability