Current Status and Future Prospects of Application Specific Engineered Nanocurcumin Compounds

Abstract

Establishing chemical conjugations among complex macromolecules and nanostructured material species with the help of activity-specific chemical moieties either acquired during chemical synthesis of the backbone structures or attaching them later along with the targeting ligands on to the nanoparticulate surfaces by surface functionalization are currently being used in preparing functional compounds appropriate for targeted drug/gene delivery applications. Current drug discoveries involving phytochemicals in place of purely synthetic molecules are getting translated faster into relatively cost-effective formulations that are free from meeting most of the requirements of the stringent test-conditions set by the regulatory authorities as they use the constituents with known toxicity profiles already established through traditional experience of using them as medicine over a long period of time in the past. Moreover, the knowledge of their physico-chemical attributes like hydrophilicity, hydro-phobicity, and amphiphilicity of these constituents is easy to put to use in controlling the shape and size of the nanoparticulate formulations through self-organized nano/microstructures like micelles and other hierarchical supramolecular assemblies in different solvent media as discussed in this review. The structure activity relationships (SARs) of curcumins have shown enough indications that they are going to emerge as an intelligent drug design platforms where the synergistic combinations with natural and benign phytochemicals with numerous biomedical activities would certainly produce smarter but affordable treatments of human ailments in near future.