Fw: [SayEverything] Gunkaari Haldi

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Tuesday, August 25, 2009 3:59 PM

[sayEverything] Gunkaari Haldi

'Turmeric is receiving attention for medical applications'24 July 2009, 12:00am Modern science has substantiated what grandma always knew: the extraordinary healing power of turmeric. A team of scientists led by Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy , an IIT Kanpur alumnus and a professor of chemistry and biophysics at the University of Michigan, has deciphered the exact functioning of curcumin, a major ingredient of turmeric powder, in curing wounds, infections and other health problems. He spoke about his research project and its medical prospects to Harsh Kabra : What inspired this project? It has always been my dream to work on research projects that are immediately useful to the community. Ever since i came to know about the power of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance or NMR spectroscopy, a technique that exploits the magnetic properties of certain nuclei to determine the structure of chemical and biochemical compounds including drugs, i wanted to apply it to understand the mystery behind medicinally valuable materials found in India. What are your findings? We used solid state NMR spectroscopy on curcumin to discover how its molecules act like a biochemical disciplinarian. In our very recent research, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, we found that curcumin molecules insert themselves into the cell membrane and sit quite comfortably in its greasy layer. This makes curcumin behave like cholesterol and stabilise the membrane such that invaders like bacteria, virus and other micro-organisms find it very difficult to destabilise the cell membrane structure, thereby increasing the cells' resistance to infection by disease-causing microbes. How do your findings complement the knowledge about turmeric's therapeutic merits handed down by tradition in India? There has been a lot of research in understanding the role of curcumin for various applications. We believe that our atomic-level resolution insights into the membrane-binding properties of curcumin will enable a plethora of studies on the investigation of curcumin in ageing-related diseases and also bacterial and viral infections, as all of them are related to the damage of the membrane structure of human cells. Has turmeric received its due in modern medicine? Yes, it has received attention for medical applications to a great extent. Increasing numbers of studies on curcumin are being reported, which show the significance of this compound. It is encouraging to see that curcumin supplements are available now. However, a systematic study on the physico-chemical properties of curcumin and its role in health is still lacking. I foresee that curcumin and its derivatives will find more medicinal applications. What would those applications be? Curcumin could be used as a supplement to boost health. However, more studies are essential to completely understand how it can be used to treat ageing-related diseases like type-2 diabetes and Alzheimer's disease, cancer and bacterial and viral infections. Some research along these lines is already in progress in our laboratory.