Curcumin effect on cancer cells' multidrug resistance: An update

Abstract

Chemotherapy is one of the main methods for cancer treatment. However, despite many advances in the design of anticancer drugs, their efficiency is limited due to their high toxicity and resistance of cells to chemotherapeutic drugs. In order to improve the cancer therapy, it is essential to use the compounds that can overcome drug resistance and increase treatment efficiency. Researchers have studied the effects of natural compounds for the controlling various drug resistance mechanisms. Curcumin is a natural phenolic compound which shows potent anticancer activities in different tumors, alone or as an adjuvant with other antitumor drugs to prevent or inhibit the survival and cancer progression by various mechanisms. The role of curcumin in overcoming drug resistance was followed by reviewing different applications of curcumin in cancer therapy. Afterward, the clinical impacts of curcumin, role of curcumin in decreasing drug resistance in different cancer cells and its mechanisms were discussed. It has been demonstrated that curcumin regulates signaling pathways in cancer cells, reduces the expression of proteins related to drug resistance, and increases the performance of antitumor drugs at various levels. Curcumin reverses multidrug resistance mechanisms and increases sensitivity of resistance cells to chemotherapy. This review mainly focuses on different mechanisms of drug resistance and curcumin as a nontoxic natural substance to eliminate the effects of drug resistance through modulation and controlling cell resistance pathways and eventually suggests curcumin as a potent chemosensitizer in cancers.

Current understanding of epigenetics mechanism as a novel target in reducing cancer stem cells resistance

“…CPG islands are abundant in the gene promoter region; methylation of these areas causes long-term silencing of genes [ 11 ]. It has been generally reported that hypomethylation in the oncogenes’ promoter increases their expression and hypermethylation in the tumor suppressor genes promoter causes the silencing of genes in many cancers [ 167 ]. Decreased expression of tumor suppressor genes has been shown to lead to increased plasticity in cell phenotype such as EMT, change in cell function, self-renewal and differentiation potential, and finally the formation of CSCs in different cancer cells [ 168 , 169 ].…”

Self-Assembly Engineering Nanodrugs Composed of Paclitaxel and Curcumin for the Combined Treatment of Triple Negative Breast Cancer

“…Furthermore, Cur has been proved to have excellent safety and widespread availability with low cost. Previous studies have indicated that Cur can downregulate the NF-kB and PI3K/Akt signaling pathways in cancer cells, which can inhibit cell growth, induce apoptosis, and increase drug sensitization ( Hamzehzadeh et al, 2018 ; Subramaniam et al, 2018 ; Chen et al, 2019 ; Ghasemi et al, 2019 ; Maiti et al, 2019 ; Zusso et al, 2019 ; Borges et al, 2020 ; Keyvani-Ghamsari et al, 2020 ). In addition, the combination of PTX and Cur provided synergistic anti-cancer effects and eliminated cancer stem cells in TNBC ( Baek and Cho, 2017 ; Calaf et al, 2018 ; Saghatelyan et al, 2020 ).…”

Clinical effects of curcumin in enhancing cancer therapy: A systematic review

“…Curcumin reverses drug resistance mechanisms and results in increasing the sensitivity of chemotherapyresistant cells. In the research conducted by Keyvani-Ghamsari et al, they demonstrated that curcumin is an effective chemical in cancer treatment [85].…”