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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 Jun 17.
Published in final edited form as: J Cancer Ther. 2014 Mar 31;5(4):369–386. doi: 10.4236/jct.2014.54044

Figure 9.

Figure 9

A summary of the conclusions reached in this work. Curcumin treatment up-regulates the expression of BMP-7 either in the prostate cancer cells themselves or in the bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells which seem to have a negative regulatory effect on the cancer progression as seen in the near normal X-Rays after treatment. The up-regulation of BMP-7 may alter the BMP-7/TGF-β ratio to tip it towards a more mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition (MET). The expressed osteomimetic properties are inhibited by curcumin as shown in our previous work. At the same time, the up-regulated BMP-7 induces an adipogenic differentiation program characteristic of either the brown fat or the beige fat lineage. The ultimate result of all these processes is that there may be a distinct brake on the vicious feed forward cycle of reciprocal activation of osteoclasts and more TGF-β release from osteoclasts. See Discussion for details.