Curcumin: New Weapon against Cancer

All the evidences point out to the fact that the incidence, mortality and number of persons living with cancer are on the rise and, thus, this will impose a significant burden on health care resources. The considerable number of deaths from cancer necessitates the need to developing novel alter-native cures that are efficient, safe, cheap and easy to use. In the search for new therapies for tu-mors, naturally-derived compounds have been considered as a good source of novel anticancer drugs. The challenge here is to find products that are pharmacologically active against tumor cells with suitable toxicity profile and least damage to normal cells. Curcumin is a spice widely used in many countries especially in South Asia and it has gained importance for its anticancer function and low toxicity toward normal tissues in a range of biological systems. In spite of significant re-search works, many difficulties hinder its oral use in the therapy of different kind of tumors, such as extreme low solubility in water, quick break down and excretion after being absorbed in the human body. Low bioavailability due to enhanced metabolism and rapid system elimination is another problem that hinders oral use of curcumin as anticancer agent. Therefore, the previously mentioned poor pharmacokinetics characteristics inhibit curcumin from reaching its site of actio