Research Projects

Curcuminoids, yellow-colored compounds found in the rhizomes of Curcuma longa L., have been used for centuries in traditional medicine. They have various pharmacological applications, including anthelmintic, carminatives, laxative, stomachic, liver ailments, and in food industries as a condiment agent. The primary bioactive molecule responsible for these properties was isolated and named curcumin. To overcome curcumin's low oral bioavailability, researchers have developed synthetic routes such as conjugation with nucleoside, cyclodextrin, composite nanoparticles, and biopolymers. A large number of curcumin analogues have been prepared and examined for improvement in pharmacological profiles. The proposed work aims to create new analogues of curcumin derivatives using new starting reagents to achieve better pharmacological activity, bioavailability, and solubility in biological systems for various pharmacological evaluations, including cancer treatment. Objectives include achieving a novel Knoevenagel product by reacting curcumin with rare or special aldehyde derivatives, achieving dICARbonyl capped schiff base type curcumin products, achieving hydrazine derivatives by reacting alkyl, aryl, and heterocyclic hydrazine analogs with curcumin's dICARbonyl site, and achieving both homo and hetero ligated metal nanoparticles complexes using curcumin and other donor ligands. The prepared derivatives are fully characterized and subjected to CV, protein-ligand interaction, antioxidant, antimicrobial, and anticancer studies. Drug-likeliness and other pharmacological parameters are extracted using computational work, and the prepared derivatives can be interacted with specific target proteins via docking.