Turmeric combo fights colon cancer

TURMERIC, a bright yellow spice from south
Asia belonging to the ginger family, is the
main ingredient in curries — and ancient
wisdom suggests that it’s also good for
your health.
Taking this wisdom to the laboratory, Tel
Aviv University, Israel, researchers have
discovered that turmeric ’s active ingredient
called curcumin amplifies the therapeutic
activity of highly toxic anti-inflammatory
drugs used to fight colon cancer when used
at high doses.
Dr. Shahar Lev-Ari of Tel Aviv University’s
School of Public Health at the Sackler Faculty
of Medicine and his colleagues have found
that curcumin can fight cancer when used
in combination with a popular anti-
inflammatory drug, alleviating the
inflammatory response caused when cancer
takes root in the body. A treatment based
on this finding has already had promising
results in human clinical trials.
“Although more testing will be needed
before a possible new drug treatment is
developed, ” says Dr. Lev-Ari, “one could
combine curcumin with a lower dose of a
cancer anti-inflammatory drug, to better
fight colon cancer. ” The results of the new
study have been published in the journal
Therapeutic Advances in Gastroenterology.
Research in the last few decades has shown
that cancer is linked to inflammation.
Several lines of evidence demonstrate that
chronic inflammation in the stomach can
cause gastric cancer and that inflammation
in the liver from hepatitis can lead to liver
cancer.
Lev-Ari and his colleagues found that
Celecoxib, a popular anti-inflammatory drug
commonly used to treat arthritis, also
inhibits proliferation of colon cancer in
laboratory settings. Curcumin increases the
anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory effects of
Celecoxib while reducing its dose, thus
reducing its toxic side-effects, including the
rate of heart attack and stroke.
The effect of using a curcumin concentrate
to improve the effects of cancer drugs was
first proposed by Lev-Ari when he was a
graduate student at Tel Aviv University ’s
Sackler Faculty of Medicine under the
supervision of Prof. Nadir Arber and Prof.
Dov Lichtenberg.
Both co-supervisors were eager to test the
possible health benefits described in folk
medicine but were looking for hard
evidence. “We would like to use this
treatment for patients with all types of
cancers, ” says Arber. “It has the promise of
being an important life-extending therapy,
particularly for non-curable pancreatic
cancer, suggested by the very promising
results we achieved for 20 pancreatic
cancer patients. ”
Previous in vitro and in vivo experiments
conducted by the Tel Aviv University team
show that curcumin inhibits an enzyme
known as COX-2 (cyclooxygenase-2),
believed to cause inflammation. The team ’s
research demonstrates that curcumin
neutralizes oxygen free radicals, which are
believed to play an important role in
carcinogenesis.
These effects may be the basis for drug
treatment of both inflammation and cancer
through the combination of curcumin and
Celecoxib. And it may also help return
previously shelved potent anticancer drugs
— taken out of use due to high toxicity —
back to the market under lower dosage
indications.