Heavy metal poisoning is generally considered as the accumulation of heavy metals, in toxic amounts, in the soft tissues of the body. Common treatments for metal poisoning include chelation using DMSA (dimercaptosuccinicacid), EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid), etc. However, it has a number of significant limitations including: toxicity, potential damage to the liver and kidney, and limited scope of individual chelating agents. So, there is an urgent need to develop new environmentally friendly and biologically benign techniques to remove toxic metals. Curcumin, a phytochemical isolated from the Turmeric plant, chelates several metal ions via keto-enol tautomerism of the β-diketone moiety to form metal complexes. A major problem associated with employing curcumin as a metal chelating agent is its lack of solubility in water. We have reported the synthesis of water soluble curcumin glucose polymers to enhance the activity of this highly biocompatible and environmentally friendly compound (curcumin), and successfully demonstrated the applicability of these Curcumin-Glucose Polymer Conjugates (CGPC) to selectively chelate and precipitate toxic metals with a high degree of efficiency.

Curcumin-glucose macromolecular conjugates via click-chemistry for selective chelation of toxic metals

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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