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According to the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Koji Wada and collegues from the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan have created a system for increasing the delivery of curcumin to the blood stream. Curcumin is a chemical found in yellow curry, and is being studied as a treatment for everything from colon cancer to Alzheimer’s disease. The problem until now is that the ingestion of curry or purified curcumin must pass through the digestive tract. When the curcumin enters the stomach, the enzymes and acidity combine to break down most of the curcumin before it can be delivered to the blood stream.
Scientists have run into this issue with many other drugs including insulin, and have created liposomes to encapsulate the drug so it can more effectively reach the target. Liposomes are generally made up of phospholipids and create a bilayer similar to the membrane that forms around a cell. The structure of the liposome is much more resistant to the environment of the stomach, which results in an increase of the drug to the blood stream after digestion. Wada and his colleagues have adapted this technology for the delivery of curcumin, and then administered this improved drug to rats for testing. Preliminary results show a quadrupling of the curcumin delivered to the blood stream and also increased antioxidant levels. If this delivery system continues to show promise, it could be used by other researchers in their quest to use curcumin to help combat all sorts of maladies.
Christie on 29 Nov 2009 at 6:55 pm #
That is awesome. It’s not enough for researchers to create or discover a compound that’s active against disease or helps the body in some other way – the delivery of the drug is ultra important too. If they can get curcumin past the stomach in these liposomes, then think of all the drugs that currently can’t be used in oral form for that same reason – maybe it will work for them too!
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Dan Furnas on 30 Nov 2009 at 8:16 pm #
Exactly. I think many people lose sight of the fact that you can create a wonder drug, but if you can’t get it into your system, it can’t help you. For a while, I worked for a company that had that problem. Their treatment should work quite well, but they couldn’t get it to pass through the digestive tract in one piece, rendering it virtually useless.
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Greg Barbe on 01 Dec 2009 at 9:27 am #
What a coincidence Dan, I think I worked at the same company
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