Curcumin is one of the main ingredients that form a mixture of natural compounds in the spice turmeric. Turmeric and pure curcumin are nontoxic compounds that are considered safe by the FDA. The curcumin worldwide market was estimated worth $130 million in 2019 with the prospect of growing in the next five years. Pharmaceutical grade curcumin accounted for about half of the market share in 2015. One challenge with using curcumin isolated from natural sources as a drug is that isolated curcumin is not a pure substance. In addition, plant growth and harvest conditions reported having a significant impact on the quantity of curcumin in the extract. Most often commercially available natural curcumin samples contain only 85% of curcuminoid content with exact curcumin quantities often not specified. For reproducible biological performance, pure samples of curcumin of known composition are necessary. Separation of a natural extract using high-performance liquid chromatography produces high purity curcumin but at a high cost.<br/>The alternative approach is synthesis, which offers a solution to the purity problem and allows a route to obtain structural modifications of compounds. In large, curcumin and its analogs are obtained using a procedure developed in 1960. It requires use of up to five additional organic compounds that each serve a role in the synthesis but are not part of the product structure. For an industrial large-scale production of curcumin generation of substantial hazardous organic waste is not desirable. In this study, I have explored a possibility of substitution of an organic compound used as a nonenvironmentally friendly water scavenger in curcumin synthesis with a renewable inorganic substitute. I present my work on transitioning of the procedure and my preliminary findings on the synthesis of curcumin and curcuminoids.

Analysis of regenerable water scavengers performance in synthesis of curcumin and its close analogs

ACS Fall 2021

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