title: Conjugation of curcumin onto hyaluronic acid enhances its aqueous solubility and stability.
abstract: Polymer-drug conjugates have gained much attention largely to circumvent lower drug solubility and to enhance drug stability. Curcumin is widely known for its medicinal properties including its anticancer efficacy. One of the serious drawbacks of curcumin is its poor water solubility which leads to reduced bioavailability. With a view to address these issues, we synthesized hyaluronic acid-curcumin (HA-Cur) conjugate. The drug conjugate was characterized using FT-IR, NMR, Dynamic light scattering and TEM techniques. The conjugates, interestingly found to assembles as micelles in aqueous phase. The formation of micelles seems to improve the stability of the drug in physiological pH. We also assessed cytotoxicity of the conjugate using L929 fibroblast cells and quantified by MTT assay.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Polymer Analysis, Biomedical Technology Wing, Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences & Technology, Poojapura, Trivandrum 695 012, India. manjjumathevan@gmail.com
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Manju
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sreenivasan
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D003474:Curcumin / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000494:pharmacology; D004355:Drug Stability; D005347:Fibroblasts / Q000166:cytology / Q000187:drug effects; D006820:Hyaluronic Acid / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000494:pharmacology; D006863:Hydrogen-Ion Concentration; D051379:Mice; D008823:Micelles; D015394:Molecular Structure; D010316:Particle Size; D012995:Solubility; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship; D013499:Surface Properties; D014867:Water / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D008823:Micelles; D014867:Water; D006820:Hyaluronic Acid; D003474:Curcumin