Wednesday 6 June 2018

Temozolomide + a dropper of curcumin for possible synergy?

Today we made the first dropper of curcumin. 150 mg of curcumin with 250ml of 0.9NaCl. The dropper lasted 2 hours. On this day, the dose of oral curcumin was 5x400 mg (Longvida, SLCP).

There are several reports of possible synergies between curcumin and temozolomide. Does it follow from these studies that a drip of curcumin, oral curcumin and temozolomide should be taken in such a schedule so that their concentrations in the blood are maximized at the same time?

2014 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25050915
We demonstrated that CUM enhanced the therapeutic response to TMZ in U87MG glioblastoma by enhancing apoptosis... We demonstrated that CUM enhanced the therapeutic response to TMZ in U87MG glioblastoma by enhancing apoptosis.

2015 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26239619
Combined curcumin and TMZ treatment significantly (P<0.05) inhibited U‑87 MG cell proliferation and induced apoptotic death, compared with each alone.

2015 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25542083
Autophagy inhibition improves the efficacy of curcumin/temozolomide combination therapy in glioblastomas.

Soon we will have 5 days of temozolomide. I think about whether it will be useful if temozolomide is taken at the beginning of a 2-hour dropper of curcumin?

6 comments:

  1. If you're expecting direct anti-tumor effects of curcumin, as in these mouse studies, then it would make sense to co-ordinate the timing. If you're expecting more immunological effects of curcumin then the timing maybe wouldn't matter so much. Most mouse studies use intraperitoneal administration, which probably has a closer pharmacokinetic profile to intravenous, rather than oral. So it's conceivable that intravenous curcumin could have some direct anti-tumor effect as seen in mouse studies using immunodeficient nude mice.

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  2. Of course most oncologists would say not to combine curcumin with TMZ because curcumin is an antioxidant. This is just a blanket condemnation against anything with any antioxidant activity combined with standard treatments, rather than being evidence-based. Curcumin especially is considered to be a "pleiotropic" compound with many potential targets, in addition to being an antioxidant. The most convincing data I've seen shows curcumin as reducing STAT3 activity, which means it could have both general beneficial immune effects as well as direct anti tumor effects (provided you can get enough of it to the tumor).

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  3. For a change, our Neuro-Oncologist was okay with Curcumin along with Temozolomide and he is not too fussed about anti-oxidants either.

    Question: I am looking to buy this for AA3 and as per https://bit.ly/2JVOaWJ, I am trying to have 8 grams of standard Curcumin extract. However, Longvida Curcumin this only contains 100 mg of Curcumin per Capsule (https://amzn.to/2leSFOg). Can you please help me understand, if due to higher bioavailability, we can adjust the dose down. If so, what dose (and how many mg of Curcumin) would you advise?

    Thank you!

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    Replies
    1. My mom now takes 5-6 capsules 400mg CurcuBrain a day and 2 times a week we use intravenous curcumin 3mg / kg (150mg total).

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    2. Longvida capsules contain about 25% curcumin, and the rest is lipids and other ingredients. I believe the dosing of Longvida can be adjusted downward compared to unformulated curcumin, which has almost 0 bioavailability (usually no unconjugated curcumin is found in the blood using unformulated curcumin powder, mostly what is found is curcumin glucuronides and other conjugates).

      A fairly common dose of Longvida is 2000 mg daily (or four x 500 mg capsules.

      https://alzheimer.neurology.ucla.edu/Curcumin.html

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    3. Thank you Stephen and Semyon! Much appreciated.

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