Thalidomide and turmeric team up to kill blood cancer cells

12-Jul-2013 - USA

Scientists in the United States have combined banned morning sickness drug thalidomide with a pigment from curry spice turmeric to create a new drug compound that kills cancer cells.

In research published in Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry, the spice-drug hybrid is shown to cause cell death in multiple myeloma, the second most common type of blood cancer.

Thalidomide was introduced in the 1950s to treat morning sickness in pregnant women, but was then banned because of its link to birth defects. The drug has recently been ‘rediscovered’ and approved for the effective treatment of multiple myeloma. It works by disturbing the microenvironment of tumour cells in bone marrow and modulating the immune system, but it breaks down in the body, causing side effects such as thrombosis.

Turmeric is a spice commonly used in South Asian and Middle Eastern cooking. Curcumin, a pigment in turmeric that gives it its characteristic yellow colour, has also been shown to have activity against cancer, including myeloma, but it has limited solubility in water so it isn’t easily taken up by the body.

The scientists have taken these two components and created a hybrid scaffold that combines structural features of the two. Analogues of this scaffold that have shown enhanced solubility and higher toxicity to myeloma cells than either thalidomide or curcumin, or a mixture of the two.