TY - JOUR
T1 - Curcumin as an enhancer of therapeutic efficiency of chemotherapy drugs in breast cancer
AU - Farghadani, Reyhaneh
AU - Naidu, Rakesh
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine & Health Sciences, Monash University Malaysia, for providing the research facilities and support to conduct this study.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2022/2/2
Y1 - 2022/2/2
N2 - Female breast cancer is the world’s most prevalent cancer in 2020. Chemotherapy still remains a backbone in breast cancer therapy and is crucial in advanced and metastatic breast cancer treatment. The clinical efficiency of chemotherapy regimens is limited due to tumor heterogeneity, chemoresistance, and side effects. Chemotherapeutic drug combinations with natural products hold great promise for enhancing their anticancer efficacy. Curcumin is an ideal chemopreventive and chemotherapy agent owning to its multitargeting function on various regulatory molecules, key signaling pathways, and pharmacological safety. This review aimed to elucidate the potential role of curcumin in enhancing the efficacy of doxorubicin, paclitaxel, 5-fluorouracil, and cisplatin via combinational therapy. Additionally, the molecular mechanisms underlying the chemosensitizing activity of these combinations have been addressed. Overall, based on the promising therapeutic potential of curcumin in combination with conventional chemotherapy drugs, curcumin is of considerable value to develop as an adjunct for combination chemotherapy with current drugs to treat breast cancer. Furthermore, this topic may provide the frameworks for the future research direction of curcumin–chemotherapy combination studies and may benefit in the development of a novel therapeutic strategy to maximize the clinical efficacy of anticancer drugs while minimizing their side effects in the future breast cancer treatment.
AB - Female breast cancer is the world’s most prevalent cancer in 2020. Chemotherapy still remains a backbone in breast cancer therapy and is crucial in advanced and metastatic breast cancer treatment. The clinical efficiency of chemotherapy regimens is limited due to tumor heterogeneity, chemoresistance, and side effects. Chemotherapeutic drug combinations with natural products hold great promise for enhancing their anticancer efficacy. Curcumin is an ideal chemopreventive and chemotherapy agent owning to its multitargeting function on various regulatory molecules, key signaling pathways, and pharmacological safety. This review aimed to elucidate the potential role of curcumin in enhancing the efficacy of doxorubicin, paclitaxel, 5-fluorouracil, and cisplatin via combinational therapy. Additionally, the molecular mechanisms underlying the chemosensitizing activity of these combinations have been addressed. Overall, based on the promising therapeutic potential of curcumin in combination with conventional chemotherapy drugs, curcumin is of considerable value to develop as an adjunct for combination chemotherapy with current drugs to treat breast cancer. Furthermore, this topic may provide the frameworks for the future research direction of curcumin–chemotherapy combination studies and may benefit in the development of a novel therapeutic strategy to maximize the clinical efficacy of anticancer drugs while minimizing their side effects in the future breast cancer treatment.
KW - Anticancer agent
KW - Cancer drug discovery
KW - Chemosensitizer
KW - Clinical trial
KW - Combination therapy
KW - Curcumin
KW - Drug resistance
KW - Signaling pathway
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85124465859&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/ijms23042144
DO - 10.3390/ijms23042144
M3 - Article
C2 - 35216255
AN - SCOPUS:85124465859
VL - 23
JO - International Journal of Molecular Sciences
JF - International Journal of Molecular Sciences
SN - 1422-0067
IS - 4
M1 - 2144
ER -
