The Essential Medicinal Chemistry of Curcumin

By Kathryn M. Nelson, Jayme L. Dahlin, J. Bisson, J. Graham, G. Pauli, Michael A. Walters. Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, 2017

1,750 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Curcumin is a constituent (up to ∼5%) of the traditional medicine known as turmeric. Interest in the therapeutic use of turmeric and the relative ease of isolation of curcuminoids has led to their extensive investigation. Curcumin has recently been classified as both a PAINS (pan-assay interference compounds) and an IMPS (invalid metabolic panaceas) candidate. The likely false activity of curcumin in vitro and in vivo has resulted in >120 clinical trials of curcuminoids against several diseases. No double-blinded, placebo controlled clinical trial of curcumin has been successful. This manuscript reviews the essential medicinal chemistry of curcumin and provides evidence that curcumin is an unstable, reactive, nonbioavailable compound and, therefore, a highly improbable lead. On the basis of this in-depth evaluation, potential new directions for research on curcuminoids are discussed.

Subfields: Molecular Biology, Molecular Medicine, Pharmacology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6b450404232a2d6d1b84b30457f2808f99e3e7d6

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In Molecular Biology

1. Raghavendhar R. Kotha
2. Leroy Hood
3. William C. S. Cho
4. Devanand L. Luthria

In Molecular Medicine

1. Raghavendhar R. Kotha
2. A. Karthikeyan
3. Taesun Min
4. N. Senthil
5. Devanand L. Luthria

In Pharmacology

1. Raghavendhar R. Kotha
2. Devanand L. Luthria

Citations in the corpus

• Curcumin: Biological, Pharmaceutical, Nutraceutical, and Analytical Aspects (2019, methodology): “Pure CUR has been used in many in vitro studies, whereas most in vivo studies and clinical trials use CCMs mixture [24].”
• Nanocurcumin: A Promising Candidate for Therapeutic Applications (2020, background): “Curcumin has three chemical substances: two aromatic ring systems of o-methoxy phenolic groups, linked by a seven-carbon connector comprising a a,b-unsaturated b-diketone moiety (Nelson et al., 2017).”
• A Comprehensive Review on Medicinal Plants as Antimicrobial Therapeutics: Potential Avenues of Biocompatible Drug Discovery (2019, background): “It is sold in the market in many forms such as herbal supplements, food additives to increase flavour and aroma, cosmetics ingredients, and as a colouring agent in many food items [72].”
• Polyphenols: A concise overview on the chemistry, occurrence, and human health (2019, background): “Curcumin, which represents by alone a constituent (up to ∼5%) of the traditional olistic medicine, is known as turmeric (Nakmareong et al., 2011; Nelson et al., 2017).”
• Turmeric and Its Major Compound Curcumin on Health: Bioactive Effects and Safety Profiles for Food, Pharmaceutical, Biotechnological and Medicinal Applications (2020, background): “On the other hand, curcumin seems to offer a promising potential for the therapeutic development from turmeric, categorized as a Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) material, with a stable metabolism and low toxicity (Nelson et al., 2017).”
• Human Gut Microbiota and Gastrointestinal Cancer (2018, background): “However, numerous clinical studies assessing the efficacy of curcumin in cancer treatment has been inconclusive [237].”