CURCUMIN AND CAPSAICIN: FROM SPICES TO CANCER-SUPPRESSING AGENTS

Abstract

It is currently accepted that the inflammatory cascade plays a fundamental role in the tumor cell development stages, being the inflammation process linked to tumor progression and dissemination. In this context, natural products (NPs) represent potential anticancer drugs due to their ability to interact with several immunological mediators and, therefore, ability to produce an immunomodulatory response. To elucidate the potential roles of curcumin and capsaicin as cancer-suppressing agents, presenting the recently published laboratorial and clinical researches. In this review it will be addressed the effects of both these NPs in relation to pancreatic, gastric, breast, lung and prostate cancer. A bibliographic review was performed on the Pubmed (Medline) and Scientific Electronic Library Online (Scielo). The inclusion criteria consisted of articles written in English and published between the years of 2000 and 2020. Curcumin and capsaicin demonstrated to be able to modulate multiple important molecular targets that are responsible for cancer development. In vivo and in vitro studies elucidated that the NPs acted in many signalling pathways on the different types of cancer, causing antiproliferative, antisurvival, and antimigratory effects on a variety of cancer cell lines. This review concluded that both curcumin and capsaicin are effective compounds on preventing and treating the neoplasms studied. However, the applications of this phytochemicals on humans are still limited and in need for more studies.