Turmeric extract can kill cancer cells - Fusion - WeRIndia

Turmeric is a widely-known Indian spice that has many uses in healthy cuisine and natural remedies. Indians commonly use turmeric in their cuisine as a condiment.

Turmeric is also used for therapeutic effect. It can also be used as a method to kill the germs that are present in raw meat.

However, scientists have discovered that extracts of turmeric could be used to kill cancer cells.

Curcumin is a naturally-occurring substance in turmeric. When isolated from it, it can be an effective agent for killing cancerous cells.

However, Dipanjan Pan, an associate professor at the University of Illinois in the United States, says that curcumin is currently a “false lead”.

The substance is therapeutic, but its full effect cannot be utilized.

Curcumin is poorly soluble in water, so it cannot be easily delivered to cancerous tumors. Delivering a drug requires it to be soluble in water.

This allows it to be easily transported through the bloodstream. Researchers decided to use platinum to enable the solubility of curcumin.

With curcumin and platinum, the researchers were able to make a sophisticated metallocyclic complex.

The study conducted by these researchers showed that the metallocyclic complex was 100 times more effective in treating certain types of cancers.

These cancer types included breast cancer and melanoma. The complex was much more effective at treating these cancer types than platinum or curcumin by themselves.

It kills cancer cells by fragmenting their DNA.

Curcumin has also been shown to prevent STAT3 from phosphorylating. STAT3 is a signaling pathway that triggers the growth of more cancer cells.

Not only could curcumin finally provide people with a cure for cancer, but it could also be the thing that leads to many other discoveries in cancer treatment.

Image credit: Image by Summer Malik from Pixabay (Free for commercial use)

Image Reference: https://pixabay.com/it/photos/spezie-curcuma-ingrediente-sapore-2613032/