Curcumin-Loaded Aluminum and Magnesium Metal-Organic Frameworks: Exploring their Stability and Applications

Abstract

Curcumin is known to be “the wonderful drug of life” since it was proved to be an excellent candidate for many therapeutic applications such as antioxidant, antimicrobial, and anti-cancer activities. However, despite extensive reports on its health benefits, curcumin remains hardly employed as a medicinal agent due to its low solubility and poor bioavailability. Moreover, curcumin is very unstable and tends to degrade quickly which further limits its applications. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have gained great attention in the field of drug loading due to their diversity and tunability, so they are seen as great candidates for hosting curcumin. In this thesis, aluminum fumarate MOF (AlMOF) and magnesium formate MOF (MgMOF) were tested for their ability to hold curcumin by the wet impregnation technique, and the parameters were optimized. The stability of the resulting systems were also tested by examining the degradation of Cur-MOFs over time and comparing it to the degradation rate of curcumin in its free state. This was used to assess the ability of the MOFs to protect curcumin and to enhance its stability. In addition, the antioxidant activity of curcumin was tested in its free state and in the Cur-MOF systems, and the results are studied to address the boosted antioxidant activity of the Cur-MOF systems. The ability of curcumin to sense metals was also evaluated for different metal cations. Moreover, the systems were also tested for their potential to deliver curcumin at different temperatures. These results open the door to an in-depth study of Cur-MOF systems as great therapeutic agents due to their enhancement of the therapeutic properties of curcumin, all while protecting it, favoring its solubility, and maintaining its stability.