Bringing Curcumin to the Clinic in Cancer Prevention: a Review of Strategies to Enhance Bioavailability and Efficacy

ABSTRACT Curcumin is widely available, inexpensive spice that has been used in ancient folk medicine for millennia, especially in India. Curcumin has the pharmacological properties that slow or reverse cellular proliferation and enhance apoptosis and differentiation associated with a diverse array of molecular effects. Despite its effective anticarcinogenesis properties, curcumin’s poor solubility, instability, and extensive metabolism result in poor oral bioavailability. Strategies to enhance curcumin delivery include encapsulating or incorporating curcumin in a nanoparticle or microparticle drug delivery system, synthesizing more stable curcumin analogs that resist metabolism while retaining curcumin’s pharmacological properties, and adding another natural product that has bioenhancing properties to curcumin or combination of two of these strategies. This review comprehensively explores curcumin’s chemistry and pharmacology followed by comparing and contrasting a vast number of strategies designed to enhance curcumin’s bioavailability and its therapeutic effects. The review provides insights into which curcumin formulation strategies have the greatest promise to reach clinical application.