Professor William Steward, director of the Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre, based at the University, describes how their research on curcumin began over eight years ago. They have a special interest in drugs that might prevent cancer, called chemoprevention, and isolated the chemical curcumin in the laboratory. They found it had a profound effect on reducing the development of tumours. Their work confirmed previous findings, that there are over a hundred ways that curcumin can be beneficial in changing the way that tumour cells work.
For example curcumin reduces blood vessels growing into tumours and prevents enzymes being produced that make cells more cancerous. Curcumin also slows the rate of cancerous cells spreading. Their findings suggest a similar effect on pancreatic cancer, but as curcumin is absorbed mostly into the bloodstream via the bowel, its most immediate effect is treating bowel cancer.
Steward says, ‘we are now working with new ways of formulating curcumin into drugs which increase the absorption into the blood by 15-20 fold greater. The curcumin is the active compound and affects numerous signalling pathways used by the cells to become more cancerous. So it probably binds to proteins and molecules in the cells and disrupts their normal functioning.’
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