Curcumin is a dye derived from turmeric, which has many therapeutic uses. The fantastic therapeutic uses and optical response of Curcumin have caught researchers' attention. The possibility of enhancing Curcumin's optical properties to reach deeper tissue imaging and improve current bio-imaging techniques has been explored. Many tissue staining dyes exhibit similar chemical characteristics to Curcumin, which makes it an ideal and cost effective model. Imaging dyes typically exhibit molecular symmetry, contain strong electron-withdrawing groups, and large conjugation. Curcumin exhibits these characteristics and thus was first used as a model to approach aggregation in vitro. It has been demonstrated that molecular aggregation in certain dyes, changes their optical properties dramatically. The aforementioned can be used to i) increase the resolution of current bioimaging techniques, and ii) improve the effectivity of specific photodynamic therapies. In this conference, we will present our current results on the aggregation of Curcumin and its dependence with the concentration, temperature, solvent polarity, and pH by the use of UV-Vis, time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy and electronic structure methods. Our results show a direct relationship between aggregation and concentration and an inverse dependence with the temperature. The monomers and aggregates can be discriminated easily by their characteristic fluorescence emissions and fluorescence lifetimes when excitation is carried at 429 nm on solutions containing 5% Ethanol in KH2PO4/K2HPO4 buffer solution. One of the most remarkable characteristics of Curcumin found under this research was its highly anisotropic emission, which can mask the aggregate and monomer peaks if the incorrect excitation is used. The characteristics mentioned above makes Curcumin a perfect candidate for the study and optimization of the optical properties of aggregates that can lead to potential applications in the fields of bioimaging and medicine.

Characterization of curcumin molecular aggregation by UV-Vis, and time-resolve fluorescence spectroscopy

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.