Curcumin research for cancer in bone marrow

[william-Indo]

New hope for MPN and blood cancer patients from Japan

scitechdaily.com/anti-tumor...

[EPguy]

This report has some more info on it, it's called TBP1901:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/362...

"TBP1901 itself had minimal antitumor effects in vitro, whereas it demonstrated significant antitumor effects in vivo" So it works only in the body.

A couple questions/concerns (without answers of course):

-Is this an improvement over the high bioavail versions some of us are taking? ie Curcuwin)

-Some conflicting info with NAC, but it seems one must not take NAC with it: "In vitro, aglycone curcumin inhibited NF-kappa B signaling pathways whereas it caused production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). (so it's good and bad in a lab dish). ROS scavenger, N-acetyl-L-cysteine, partially reversed antitumor effects of aglycone curcumin." Was this in vitro too?

So is NAC helpful in vivo (the body) (reducing ROS) or is it bad (reversing antitumor)? Is it bad only in vitro

--

This seems to be more like a high potency drug than a supplement so it would need close Dr coordination I think.

[Bluetop]

Good to see the cucumin research going on in different locations. Thanks for posting

[PhysAssist]

Hi william-Indo,

Thanks for posting the article links, thanks to EPguy for the further look into it.

I love the concept and application of pro-drugs, and in fact have been taking one [Nabumetone, which is my NSAID of choice] for several decades because of the manner in which it enhances the treatment effects without causing side-effects.

Frequently adequate serum levels of medications that taken orally can be hard to achieve because of something called the 'first-pass effect'.

To explain briefly [relatively], anything ingested orally is digested into whatever simplest components it can be broken down into by stomach acid and digestive enzymes, [which is sometimes a similar, but separate problem], and then absorbed through the intestinal walls by a variety of mechanisms into the veins around the gut, which are called the portal veins.

The portal veins go directly to the liver where the absorbed materials are processed by the liver- this is why it's called the 'first-pass effect'- everything has to first pass through the liver and only then gets sent out into the general circulation.

This can be problematic, because the liver sees almost everything as either a potential toxin or a component of food, so it either neutralizes it or processes into something that cells can use as fuel.

Thus a lot of medications and other chemicals can either get completely or just mostly changed into something inert for excretion, leaving just small amounts of unmetabolized [biologically active] medication to spread out through the serum. Examples include medications like testosterone and acyclovir, the former of which requires non-oral dosing, and latter of which requires 5X/daily dosing.

Conversely in the case of pro-drugs like nabumetone and TBP1901, when the liver acts upon the absorbed medication, it turns it from an inert [non-biologically active] chemical into an active medication that can then get into serum and therefore into the tissues where it's action occurs in much higher levels.

Apparently curcumin is subject to a large degree of first pass effect, so that only a little of what is taken orally can eventually be found in the serum and tissues.

Incidentally, acyclovir has been largely replaced by Valtrex [Valcyclovir], which is a pro-drug that the liver metabolizes in acyclovir, achieving serum levels equaled only by IV administration otherwise.

As an aside, the reason I take Nabumetone preferentially to other NSAIDs is when taken orally, it's non-acidic [unlike every other NSAID], and because of how the portal versus general circulation works, its active metabolite never gets to high enough concentrations in the gastric circulation to affect the acid/mucus balance, so I don't get the reflux esophagitis and gastritis that other NSAIDs cause me to experience.

I hope that wasn't TLDR, but in case it was see the next line:

TLDR: TBP1901, if approved will work better than taking oral Curcumin, because of higher bioavailability.

Best,

PA