Curcumin as a Novel Nanocarrier System for Doxorubicin Delivery to MDR Cancer Cells: In Vitro and In Vivo Evaluation

Curcumin (CRC) has been widely used as a therapeutic agent for various drug delivery applications. In this work, we focused on the applicability of CRC as a nanodrug delivery agent for doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX) (commercially known as Adriamycin) coated with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) as an effective therapeutic strategy against multidrug-resistant cancer cells. The developed PEG-coated CRC/DOX nanoparticles (NPs) (PEG-CRC/DOX NPs) were well localized within the resistant cancer cells inducing apoptosis confirmed by flow cytometry and DNA fragmentation assays. The PEG-CRC/DOX NPs suppressed the major efflux proteins in DOX-resistant cancer cells. The in vivo biodistribution studies on HCT-8/DOX-resistant tumor xenograft showed improved bioavailability of the PEG-CRC/DOX NPs, and thereby suppressed tumor growth significantly compared to the other samples. This study clearly shows that curcumin nanoparticles could deliver DOX efficiently into the multidrug-resistant cancer cells to have potential therapeutic benefits.