Cancer, curcumin and

Garcea, G. et al.. Detection of curcumin and its metabolites in hepatic tissue and portal blood of patients following oral administration, Br. J. Cancer, 90, 1011, 2004. 

Table 16.1. Perhaps the first in vivo study to report the anticancer activity of curcumin was by Kuttan et al. in 1985. In this study the authors demonstrated, using an ascites mice model of Dalton s lymphoma, that both curcumin and turmeric extract could reduce the development of animal tumors [Kuttan et al., 1985]. Several reports have been published supporting the efficacy of curcumin treatment against cancer.

Aggarwal BB, Shishodia S, Takada Y, Banerjee S, Newman RA, Bueso-Ramos CE, Price JE. 2005. Curcumin suppresses the paclitaxel-induced nuclear factor-kappaB pathway in breast cancer cells and inhibits lung metastasis of human breast cancer in nude mice. Clin Cancer Res 11 7490-7498. 

Anand P, Sundaram C, Jhurani S, Kunnumakkara AB, Aggarwal BB. 2008. Curcumin and cancer An old-age disease with an age-old solution. Cancer Lett 267 133-164. 

Di GH, Li HC, Shen ZZ, Shao ZM. 2003. [Analysis of anti-proliferation of curcumin on human breast cancer cells and its mechanism]. Zhonghua Yi Xue Za Zhi 83 1764-1768. 

Du B, Jiang L, Xia Q, Zhong L. 2006. Synergistic inhibitory effects of curcumin and 5-fluorouracil on the growth of the human colon cancer cell line HT-29. Chemotherapy 1 23-28. 

Khor TO, Keum YS, Lin W, Kim JH, Hu R, Shen G, Xu C, Gopalakrishnan A, Reddy B, Zheng X, Conney AH, Kong AN. 2006. Combined inhibitory effects of curcumin and phenethyl isothiocyanate on the growth of human PC-3 prostate xenografts in immunodeficient mice. Cancer Res 66 613-621. 

Reddy S, Rishi AK, Xu H, Levi E, Sarkar FH, Majumdar AP. 2006. Mechanisms of curcumin- and EGF-receptor related protein (ERRP)-dependent growth inhibition of colon cancer cells. Nutr Cancer 55 185-194. 

Tunstall RG, Sharma RA, Perkins S, Sale S, Singh R, Farmer PB, Steward WP, Gescher AJ. 2006. Cyclooxygenase-2 expression and oxidative DNA adducts in murine intestinal adenomas Modification by dietary curcumin and implications for clinical trials. Eur J Cancer 42 415-421. 

Zhang J, Qi H, Wu C. 2004. Research of anti-proliferation of curcumin on A549 human lung cancer cells and its mechanism. Zhong Yao Cai 27 923-927. 

Zheng L, Tong Q, Wu C. 2004. Growth-inhibitory effects of curcumin on ovary cancer cells and its mechanisms. J Huazhong Univ Sci Technolog Med Sci 24 55-58. 

Numerous studies have been published on the positive effects of turmeric, both in the prevention of cancer and in the recovery from chemotherapy and radiation treatment (Stoner and Mukhtar, 1995 Khafif, et al., 1998 Kawamori et al., 1999 Bush et al., 2001 Jung et al., 2005). In addition to its capacity to intervene in the initiation and growth of cancer cells and tumours, and to prevent their subsequent spread throughout the body by metastasis, curcumin increases cancer cells sensitivity to certain drugs commonly used to combat cancer, rendering chemotherapy more effective. 

Pervaiz, S. (1 990) Antitumor and antiviral activity of curcumin and light. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research Abstract A2325. 

Another area of research focuses on the chemopreventive properties of curcumin against prostate cancer. Curcumin decreased the proliferative potential and induced apoptosis in both androgen-dependent and androgen-independent prostate cancer cells in Dietary administration of 2% curcumin also caused a marked... 

Huang, M.T., Deschner, E.E., Newmark, H.L., Wang, Z.-Y, Eerraro T.A., and Conney, A.H., Effect of dietary curcumin and ascrobyl pahnitate on azoxymethanol-induced colonic epithelial cell proliferation and focal areas of dysplasia. Cancer Lett., 64, 117, 1992. 

Tanaka, T, Makita, H., Ohnisih, M., Hirose, Y, Wang, A., Mori, H., Satoh K., Kara, A., and Ogawa, H., Chemoprevention of 4-nitroquinoline 1-oxide-induced oral carcinogenesis by dietary curcumin and hesperidin comparison with the protective effect of P-carotene, Cancer Res., 54, 4653, 1994. 

The major pigment in Curcuma species (Zingiberaceae family) is the yellow phenolic diarylheptanoid curcumin (Jl). Curcumin and its analogs have potent antioxidant and antiinflammatory effects, cytotoxicity against tumor cells, and antitumor-promoting activity (96). The biologic effects and targets of curcumin, as well as its possible roles in cancer prevention and therapy, have been reviewed recently (97, 98). 

Singh S, Khar A. Biological effects of curcumin and its role in cancer chemoprevention and therapy. Anticancer Agents Med. Chem. 2006 6 259-270. 

---