Hey Neetika

I would recommend using  DMSO over ethanol. The solubility of curcumin in DMSO is 2.5 times higher than that in ethanol. Hence, it would help you to reduce the effect of solvent on your cells. you can prepare up to 25 mg/ml curcumin solution in DMSO. In Ethanol, you can only prepare up to 10 mg/ml of curcumin solution.

Depending on your protocol, please keep a vehicle control too. In this group you will add equivalent amount of DMSO that can be only appropriate control to confirm that effect is due to curcumin itself, not its solvent.

Just in case, if you are planning for animal studies too; I would recommend to use curcumin as a suspension with carboxymethyl cellulose for animal administration.

Many thanks Murli and Ali.  Well i have performed MTT assay related to viability using 100% ethanol as solvent. I think i can do a comparative analysis in both the solvents. Can u all suggest me anymore assays related to viability of cells other than MTT, trypan blue?

Thanks people. But I have read that DMSO produces ROS which I think will inhibit the anti-tumor activity of Curcumin too. Moreover, Alcohol is way cheaper than DMSO, so its kind of cost effective too. Is my rationale correct?

The following link has a free paper, plz chek out.

Regards

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2880212/