Magnetic Purification of Curcumin from Curcuma longa Rhizome by Novel Naked Maghemite Nanoparticles

Abstract

Naked maghemite nanoparticles, namely, surface active maghemite nanoparticles (SAMNs), characterized by a diameter of about 10 nm, possessing peculiar colloidal stability, surface chemistry, and superparamagnetism, present fundamental requisites for the development of effective magnetic purification processes for biomolecules in complex matrices. Polyphenolic molecules presenting functionalities with different proclivities toward iron chelation were studied as probes for testing SAMN suitability for magnetic purification. Thus, the binding efficiency and reversibility on SAMNs of phenolic compounds of interest in the pharmaceutical and food industries, namely, catechin, tyrosine, hydroxytyrosine, ferulic acid, coumaric acid, rosmarinic acid, naringenin, curcumin, and cyanidin-3-glucoside, were evaluated. Curcumin emerged as an elective compound, suitable for magnetic purification by SAMNs from complex matrices. A combination of curcumin, demethoxycurcumin, and bis-demethoxycurcumin was recovered by a single magnetic purification step from extracts of Curcuma longa rhizomes, with a purity >98% and a purification yield of 45%, curcumin being >80% of the total purified curcuminoids.

Sustainable production of high purity curcuminoids from Curcuma longa by magnetic nanoparticles: A case study in Brazil

“…Curcumin appeared as one of the best ligands for SAMN surface, among an extended list of compounds (Magro et al, 2015c), confirming the literature reporting on the formation of stable complexes between curcumin and iron(III) (Borsari et al, 2002). In the present report, based on preliminary studies (Magro et al, 2015c), an efficient curcuminoid purification process was developed exploiting the influence of solvent polarity on the binding equilibrium. Specifically, C. longa rhizomes, collected at 65 DAP, were manually sliced, dried at 65 C in a ventilated oven and finely ground as described in Methods.…”

“…Thus, the binding of curcuminoids on 1.0 g L À1 SAMNs was completely reversible, and the magnetic nanosystem was able to quantitatively bind and recover the curcuminoid molecules present in the rhizome extracts. For comparison, in a preliminary study, we described the purification of 3.95 mg curcuminoid g À1 C. longa rhizome by magnetic nanoparticles (Magro et al, 2015c). With respect to this value, in the present protocol the curcuminoid purification protocol was improved up to 69.7 mg curcuminoid g À1 C. longa rhizome, corresponding to a yield increase of about 17.5 times, using an order of magnitude lower concentration of SAMNs.…”

“…Curcuminoids present a keto-enol functionality, which shows strong binding proclivity toward a new category of maghemite nanoparticles, named Surface Active Maghemite Nanoparticles (SAMNs) (Magro et al, 2014b). Curcumin appeared as one of the best ligands for SAMN surface, among an extended list of compounds (Magro et al, 2015c), confirming the literature reporting on the formation of stable complexes between curcumin and iron(III) (Borsari et al, 2002). In the present report, based on preliminary studies (Magro et al, 2015c), an efficient curcuminoid purification process was developed exploiting the influence of solvent polarity on the binding equilibrium.…”

“…SAMNs present a high average magnetic moment and high water stability as colloidal suspensions without any superficial modification or coating derivatization. Because of their unique physical and chemical properties, these naked iron oxide nanoparticles are currently used to immobilize various biomolecules, such as avidin (Magro et al, 2012a), curcumin (Magro et al, 2015c), citrinin (Magro et al, 2016b), rhodamine B isothiocyanate (Sinigaglia et al, 2012) and endogenous proteins from prokaryotes and eukaryotes (Magro et al, 2016c;Miotto et al, 2016;Venerando et al, 2013). Thus, SAMNs represent an ideal material for cleaner production as their synthesis is scalable and completely carried out in water.…”

Separation and purification of curcumin using novel aqueous two-phase micellar systems composed of amphiphilic copolymer and cholinium ionic liquids

“…Because of countless health benefits (e.g. anti-inflammatory, free radical scavenging, antimicrobial, and anticancer activities) of curcumin (CCM)-related bioactive compounds (like curcuminoids from turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) spice [18]), the interest of nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industries on these has been growing [19][20][21]. Nowadays, the extraction of curcuminoids from biological sources is mostly based on solid-liquid and liquid-liquid platforms using volatile organic solvents (VOCs) [22,23], while the subsequent purification is performed by applying sequential chromatography units.…”