REVIEW article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Ethnopharmacology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1667731
This article is part of the Research TopicTreating Hepato-Intestinal Diseases with Herbal Medicines and their MetabolitesView all 8 articles
Curcumin in Colorectal Cancer: Mechanistic Insights, Pharmacological Limitations, and Translational Perspectives
Provisionally accepted
- Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Curcumin, a natural polyphenolic compound from Curcuma longa, has been extensively investigated for its potential role in colorectal cancer (CRC) prevention and therapy. Preclinical studies suggest that curcumin can modulate gut microbiota composition, influence immune cell subsets such as M1/M2 macrophages, Treg/Th17 cells, and CD8⁺ T cells, and interfere with oncogenic signaling cascades including NF-κB, PI3K/Akt, and Wnt/β-catenin. These findings collectively highlight curcumin as a biologically active compound with broad mechanistic relevance. However, most evidence derives from in vitro assays at supra-physiological concentrations or high-dose animal models, raising concerns about pharmacological validity and clinical translatability. Curcumin is also recognized as a pan-assay interfering compound (PAINS), which may account for part of its pleiotropic activity and complicates interpretation of preclinical findings. Clinical trials to date have largely confirmed safety and biomarker modulation but have not demonstrated clear improvements in progression-free or overall survival. In this review, we critically appraise the available preclinical and clinical evidence on curcumin in CRC, highlighting both its mechanistic promise and the substantial limitations that constrain its therapeutic relevance, while outlining priorities for future research.
Keywords: Curcumin, colorectal cancer, Gut Microbiota, immune response, Signaling Pathways, chemoresistance, Pharmacological limitations, Translational research
Received: 17 Jul 2025; Accepted: 19 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Zhu, Qin and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Siqi Li, 13797466502@163.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.