Curcumin, at a noncytotoxic concentration, together with cytotoxic 5-fluorouracil, effectively induced apoptosis by decreasing the expression of NRF2 in colorectal cancer cells, which, in turn, suppressed the expression ratio of Bcl-2/Bax and consequently reversed the multidrug resistance of colorectal cancer cells. Here, NFE2L2 is linked to colorectal cancer.