Abstract #2337: Effect of curcumin on human esophageal cancer cell lines

Abstract

The growth of cancer cell lines is inhibited by curcumin, a major constituent of the spice turmeric. Equally important, curcumin has little or no effect on non-transformed cells. Because of the great diversity of cancer cell types that have been tested with curcumin, we chose to evaluate multiple cancer cell lines and determined their responses to a range of curcumin concentrations. We asked whether the sensitivity of these lines to curcumin would correlate with their growth characteristics. A standard crystal violet method provided rapid screening of over a dozen cancer cell lines treated with 5 to 40 \#956;M curcumin, allowing us to rank the lines by sensitivity. All but one line showed a decline in growth with dosage. Greater than 80% of the lines showed a significant reduction in cell growth in response to 40 \#956;M curcumin by ANOVA (p<0.05). We are also comparing the degree of NF-kappaB and c-fos activation in the least and most curcumin-sensitive cell lines by immunolabeling, because both of these cell signaling pathways are inhibited by curcumin. This experimental approach may help in identifying a mechanism that is targeted by curcumin in transformed versus non-transformed cells. Drugs developed to mimic curcumin may be more easily designed with these findings.

Citation Information: In: Proc Am Assoc Cancer Res; 2009 Apr 18-22; Denver, CO. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; 2009. Abstract nr 2337.