TNF and cancer: In recent decades, in vitro models have shown that curcumin inhibits the growth of a variety of cell lines by inducing cell cycle arrest and apoptosis, most importantly through pleiotropic modulation on several distinct cancer targets including nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB), cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), STAT-3 and cyclin D1 [23–26].