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      Evaluating the Anti-cancer Efficacy of a Synthetic Curcumin Analog on Human Melanoma Cells and Its Interaction with Standard Chemotherapeutics

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          Abstract

          Melanoma is the leading cause of skin-cancer related deaths in North America. Metastatic melanoma is difficult to treat and chemotherapies have limited success. Furthermore, chemotherapies lead to toxic side effects due to nonselective targeting of normal cells. Curcumin is a natural product of Curcuma longa (turmeric) and has been shown to possess anti-cancer activity. However, due to its poor bioavailability and stability, natural curcumin is not an effective cancer treatment. We tested synthetic analogs of curcumin that are more stable. One of these derivatives, Compound A, has shown significant anti-cancer efficacy in colon, leukemia, and triple-negative inflammatory breast cancer cells. However, the effects of Compound A against melanoma cells have not been studied before. In this study, for the first time, we demonstrated the efficacy of Compound A for the selective induction of apoptosis in melanoma cells and its interaction with tamoxifen, taxol, and cisplatin. We found that Compound A induced apoptosis selectively in human melanoma cells by increasing oxidative stress. The anti-cancer activity of Compound A was enhanced when combined with tamoxifen and the combination treatment did not result in significant toxicity to noncancerous cells. Additionally, Compound A did not interact negatively with the anti-cancer activity of taxol and cisplatin. These results indicate that Compound A could be developed as a selective and effective melanoma treatment either alone or in combination with other non-toxic agents like tamoxifen.

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          Most cited references31

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          Extrinsic versus intrinsic apoptosis pathways in anticancer chemotherapy.

          Apoptosis or programmed cell death is a key regulator of physiological growth control and regulation of tissue homeostasis. One of the most important advances in cancer research in recent years is the recognition that cell death mostly by apoptosis is crucially involved in the regulation of tumor formation and also critically determines treatment response. Killing of tumor cells by most anticancer strategies currently used in clinical oncology, for example, chemotherapy, gamma-irradiation, suicide gene therapy or immunotherapy, has been linked to activation of apoptosis signal transduction pathways in cancer cells such as the intrinsic and/or extrinsic pathway. Thus, failure to undergo apoptosis may result in treatment resistance. Understanding the molecular events that regulate apoptosis in response to anticancer chemotherapy, and how cancer cells evade apoptotic death, provides novel opportunities for a more rational approach to develop molecular-targeted therapies for combating cancer.
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            How Taxol/paclitaxel kills cancer cells

            Taxol (generic name paclitaxel) is a microtubule-stabilizing drug that is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of ovarian, breast, and lung cancer, as well as Kaposi's sarcoma. It is used off-label to treat gastroesophageal, endometrial, cervical, prostate, and head and neck cancers, in addition to sarcoma, lymphoma, and leukemia. Paclitaxel has long been recognized to induce mitotic arrest, which leads to cell death in a subset of the arrested population. However, recent evidence demonstrates that intratumoral concentrations of paclitaxel are too low to cause mitotic arrest and result in multipolar divisions instead. It is hoped that this insight can now be used to develop a biomarker to identify the ∼50% of patients that will benefit from paclitaxel therapy. Here I discuss the history of paclitaxel and our recently evolved understanding of its mechanism of action.
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              Curcumin nanoformulations: a review of pharmaceutical properties and preclinical studies and clinical data related to cancer treatment.

              Curcumin, a natural yellow phenolic compound, is present in many kinds of herbs, particularly in Curcuma longa Linn. (turmeric). It is a natural antioxidant and has shown many pharmacological activities such as anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, anti-cancer, and anti-Alzheimer in both preclinical and clinical studies. Moreover, curcumin has hepatoprotective, nephroprotective, cardioprotective, neuroprotective, hypoglycemic, antirheumatic, and antidiabetic activities and it also suppresses thrombosis and protects against myocardial infarction. Particularly, curcumin has demonstrated efficacy as an anticancer agent, but a limiting factor is its extremely low aqueous solubility which hampers its use as therapeutic agent. Therefore, many technologies have been developed and applied to overcome this limitation. In this review, we summarize the recent works on the design and development of nano-sized delivery systems for curcumin, including liposomes, polymeric nanoparticles and micelles, conjugates, peptide carriers, cyclodextrins, solid dispersions, lipid nanoparticles and emulsions. Efficacy studies of curcumin nanoformulations using cancer cell lines and in vivo models as well as up-to-date human clinical trials are also discussed. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Academic Editor
                Journal
                Molecules
                Molecules
                molecules
                Molecules
                MDPI
                1420-3049
                06 July 2019
                July 2019
                : 24
                : 13
                : 2483
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Avenue, Windsor, ON N9B 3P4, Canada
                [2 ]Chemical Biology Research Center, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Whenzhou Medical University, University Town, Chashan, Wenzhou 325035, China
                Author notes
                [* ]Correspondence: spandey@ 123456uwindsor.ca ; Tel.: 519-253-3000 (ext. 3701)
                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5706-2446
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3531-5961
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7273-7154
                Article
                molecules-24-02483
                10.3390/molecules24132483
                6651075
                31284561
                21938835-d6ae-4e1e-b860-0efe0e4190f4
                © 2019 by the authors.

                Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

                History
                : 18 June 2019
                : 04 July 2019
                Categories
                Article

                melanoma,curcumin analog,apoptosis,oxidative stress,drug–drug interaction,tamoxifen,taxol,cisplatin

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