Table 1.

Clinical trials conducted in a combination of curcumin and chemotherapy.

Types of Cancer	Treatment	Participants	Findings	References
Advanced or metastatic breast cancer	Curcumin (500 mg/day) and escalated until a dose-limiting toxicity + docetaxel (100 mg/m2) for 7 days every 3 weeks	14 patients	Improves biological and clinical responses	[109]
Pancreatic cancer	Curcumin (8000 mg/day) + gemcitabine (1000 mg/m2) weekly	17 patients	Time to tumor progression was 1-12 months and overall survival was 1-24 months	[110]
Chronic myeloid leukemia	Imatinib (400 mg twice a day for 6 weeks) Group B [Turmeric powder (5 g three times/day) + imatinib (400 mg twice a day)] for 6 weeks	50 patients	The suppressive effect of nitric oxide levels was noted at Group B	[111]
Pancreatic cancer	Curcumin (1000 mg/day) + gemcitabine (1000 mg/m2 on day 1 and 8) and 60 mg/m2 of S-1 orally for 14 consecutive days every 3 weeks	21 patients	Median survival time after initiation of curcumin was 161 days and 1-year survival rate was 19%	[112]
Colorectal liver metastases	5 µM curcumin + 2 µM oxaliplatin + 5 µM 5-FU	12 patients	Curcumin enhanced the FOLFOX-based chemotherapy	[113]
Pancreatic cancer	Curcumin (2000 mg/die continuously (4 capsules, each of 500 mg, every day) + gemcitabine (10 mg/m2)	44 patients (13 locally advanced and 31 metastatic)	Median progression-free survival and overall survival were 8.4 and 10.2 months, respectively	[114]