IN VITRO EVALUATION OF ANTI-CANCER ACTIVITY OF CURCUMINOIDS FROM TURMERIC (CURCUMA LONGA L.) AGAINST MULTIDRUG RESISTANT TUMOR CELL LINES.

Cervical cancer is the second most common cancers among women worldwide. Chemotherapy is the treatment of cancer with one or more cytotoxic drugs as part of a standard regimen. One of the major causes of chemotherapy failure in cancer treatment is multidrug resistance (MDR). It shows resistance to general anticancer drugs used and shows cross resistant to many different structurally unrelated drugs causing multidrug resistance. MDR is over expression of the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters (efflux pump) such as p-glycoprotein (ABCB1 / p-gp). To overcome drug resistance most obvious response that widely employed is to use combination drug therapy. The association of phytochemicals with chemotherapy shows synergistic effects that target simultaneously multiple pathways and help to kill cancer cells and slowdown the onset of drug resistance. The present study was undertaken to assess the chemotherapeutic activity of curcuminoids against the cervical carcinoma cell line HeLa and drug resistant cell lines. Curcuminoids have broad spectrum of pharmacological properties. The IC50 values of curcuminoids revealed that curcumin had a higher cytotoxicity against HeLa cell lines (IC50= 4.30?g/ml) than DMC and BDMC are (IC50= >100 and 10.43?M) respectively. The cytotoxicity of curcuminoids against drug resistant cell lines revealed that higher cytotoxicity at BDMC treatment at IC50=7.8 and 5.2?M on KB and KBChR8-5 respectively. Therefore BDMC act on MDR cell lines more effectively than other curcuminoids which revealed that it may have synergistic effect that target the pathway related to multidrug resistance and block the efflux pump to increase the accumulation of anticancer drugs and induce cytotoxicity.