Skin cancer curcumin

Several reports have described the anticancer activity of curcumin in a variety of cancer cell lines. In vitro studies have established the activity for curcumin against breast, gastric, hepatic, pancreatic, colorectal, urinary bladder, kidney, prostate, cervical, ovarian, uterine, lung, oral, thymic, and skin cancers. Besides these cancer types, curcumin has shown in vitro therapeutic efficacy against hematological cancers including leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. One of our early studies established that the antiproliferative effect of curcumin in human breast cancer cell lines, including hormone-dependent, hormone-independent,... 

Kakar, S.S., and Roy, D. (1994) Curcumin Inhibits TPA Induced Expression of c-Eos, c-Jun and c-Myc Proto-Oncogenes Messenger RNAs in Mouse Skin, Cancer Lett. 87, 85-89. 

Several clinical trails are reported with curcumin in cancer patients around the world. Some of our recent review [Anand et al., 2008 Goel et al., 2007 Kunnumakkara et al., 2008] gives a detailed description of the clinical trials with curcumin, which are summarized in Table 16.2. An early clinical trial evaluated the effectiveness of topical application of a curcumin ointment in patients with external cancerous lesions. Patients with cancers of oral cavity (37 patients), breast (7 patients), vulva (4 patients), skin (3 patients), and miscellaneous unspecified sites (11 patients) were enrolled in this study. Remarkable symptomatic relief was observed in this study with the reduction in smell in 90% of the cases, reduction in itching in almost all cases, and reduction in exudates in 70% of cases. Reduction in lesion size and pain was observed in about 10% of the cases and only one melanoma (scalp) patient showed an adverse effect of local itching, which may be due to the allergic reaction to curcumin. 

This paper focuses on the chemopreventive efficacy of curcumin in precliiucal models of cancer prevention with a focus on cancers of the colon, skin, mammary gland, prostate, and oral cavity and discusses the results of mechaiustic studies thus far conducted in our laboratory. 

Huang, M.-T., Smart, R.C., Wong, C.-Q., and Conney, A.H., Inhibitory effect of curcumin, chlorogenic acid, caffeic acid, and ferulic acid on tumor promotion in mouse skin by 12-0-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate, Cancer Res., 48, 5941, 1988. 

Limhakul, P., Lipigomgoson, S., Namwong, O., Apisariyakul, A., and Dunn, F.W., Inhibitory effectofdietary curcumin on skin carcinogenesis in mice. Cancer Left., 116(2), 197-203,1997. 

Due to their smaller globule size and large surface area, nanoemulsions will easily absorb into the skin, so they should not have any type of virulent or irritant effects on the skin membranes. These formulations are also capable of transferring plant constituents to cell culture for treatment of cancer [48]. The drug delivery of curcumin by microemulsion increased its absorption as compared to simple curcumin emulsion [49]. For increasing the solubility and absorption of ubiquinone, a nanoemulsion of ubiquinone was also developed [50]. 

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