“…Second, the relatively high partition coefficient of curcumin is indicative of the molecule's capacity to interact with biomembranes (Jaruga et al, 1998), which is reflected by the intercalation of curcumin into model membranes (liposomes) composed of saturated (dipalmitoylphosphatidyl choline or dimyristoylphosphatidyl choline) (Barry et al, 2009;Perez-Lara et al, 2010), monounsaturated (dioleoylphosphatidyl choline) (Ingolfsson et al, 2007;Hung et al, 2008;Sun et al, 2008), or egg yolk phosphatidyl cholines (Kunwar et al, 2006;Karewicz et al, 2011). The association of curcumin with model membranes occurs at relatively high partition constants, i.e., in the range of 2.5 Â 10 4 M 21 (Kunwar et al, 2006) to 4.3 Â 10 4 M 21 (Karewicz et al, 2011) for egg yolk phosphatidylcholine liposomes and 2.4 Â 10 4 M 21 for dioleoylphosphatidyl choline liposomes , indicating that curcumin can be taken up by cells by direct intercalation into the cell membrane.…”