Simon S Chiu, Michel Woodbury-Farina, Kristen Terpstra, Vladimir Badmaev, Zack Cernovsky, Yves Bureau, Jerry Jirui, Hana Raheb, Mariwan Husn, John Copen, Mujeeb Shad, Amresh Srivastava, Veronica Sanchez, Marissa Williams, Zahra Khazaeipool, Autumn Carriere and Christina Chehade
Despite advances in pharmacotherapy, schizophrenia continues to carry a high societal disease burden related to positive and negative symptoms, and neurocognitive deficits and severe functional impairment. Findings from epigenetics have yet to translate the epigenetics targets to efficacious drug therapy. We review the repertoire of CNS pharmacology of curcumin derived from Curcuma Longa, commonly known as “turmeric”: the well-known curry extract. We highlight the body of evidence in support of the emerging role of curcumin as a panhistone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor regulating the expression of genes involved in inflammation and NMDA N-methyl-aspartic acid (NMDA)-glutamate systems, as related to schizophrenia. Based on the findings from translational studies of curcumin extracts, curcumin C-3 complex formulation (Supercurcumin™) and patented liposome-based curcumin (Lipocurc™), we propose that intravenous infusion of Lipocurc™ holds promise as the novel drug lead and preferred targeted brain delivery mode in reprogramming faculty epigenetics network and in remodeling restrictive chromatin configuration in schizophrenia. Phase II/Phase III epigenetics-biomarker-based randomized placebo-controlled trials in treatment resistant schizophrenia are warranted. Our approach of intravenous infusion of Lipocurc™ behaving as pan HDAC inhibitor represents a new paradigm of drug development in combining targeting epigenetics footprints with brain-specific drug delivery system in schizophrenia. Lipocurc™ can open the Pandora box in unexplored therapeutics vistas in modifying the phenotype of treatment resistant schizophrenia.
