Kurkumina i jej pochodne – zastosowanie w terapii przeciwnowotworowej i chemoochronnej

*Tomasz Deptuła¹, Beata Gruber², Adam Krówczyński³

Summary
Curcumin is a yellow pigment isolated from the root of Curcuma longa. For centuries, curcumin has been used in traditional Eastern medicine. Numerous scientific studies show that curcumin can be used both in cancer therapy and chemoprevention. In the literature there are reports of sensitizing tumor cells by curcumin to chemo- and radiotherapy. There are another known properties of curcumin, which form the basis of its potential use in the medicine. Additionally curcumin is untoxic. This situation provide justification for conducting further preclinical and clinical studies in this field. One of the properties of curcumin determine its antitumor activity is the ability to induce apoptosis in cancer cells. Curcumin inhibit membrane proteins from the ABC family, which are responsible for the multidrug resistance of tumor cells. Curcumin may be used not only in the treatment of cancer, but also has a chemopreventive effect. Chemopreventive effects of curcumin is connected with anti-inflammatory activity, antioxidant properties and the ability of complexing toxic heavy metals. Curcumin can be a very promising drug, but it is insoluble in water and it is metabolized very quickly. Design of derivatives is aimed to improving the biological activity of curcumin and its physical and chemical properties, by increasing the solubility in water which having a direct effect on the bioavailability of the compound. In this paper is described curcumin modifications such as: modification of the alkyl linker between the aromatic rings, the introduction of substituents into the aromatic rings, the formation of complexes with metal ions by curcumin and its derivatives. Extensive therapeutic uses of curcumin and its derivatives, and their very low toxicity provide opportunities for the use of derivatives of curcumin in medicine against various diseases.

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