Curcumin-Loaded, Self-Assembled Aloevera Template for Superior Antioxidant Activity and Trans-Membrane Drug Release

Fine combination of natural botanical extracts to evaluate and maximize their medicinal efficacy has been studied for long. However, their limited shelf-life, complicated extraction protocols, and difficult compositional analysis have always been a problem. It is due to this that such materials take time to convert them into a proper pharmaceutical technology or product. In this context, we report on synthesis of self-assembled template of one of the most popular natural product, aloevera. This forms a fine porous membrane like structure, in which a natural drug, Curcumin has been immobilized/trapped. The so-made curcumin-loaded-aloevera (CLA) structures have been carefully evaluated using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), atomic force microscopy (AFM), UV-vis spectroscopy and fluorescence microscopy. While FTIR shows that there is no chemical interaction between aloevera and Curcumin, the pores are finely occupied by Curcumin molecules. Fine microscopy structures reveal their distribution and fluorescence microscopy confirm the presence of Curcumin within the pores. TGA shows 15% loading of the Curcumin in the template and UV-visible spectroscopy data shows independent peaks of both, aloevera (196 nm and 256 nm) and Curcumin (423 nm), respectively. When subjected to antioxidant studies, using DPPH assays, CLAs show a synergistically superior DPPH radical scavenging activity as compared to only Curcumin and only aloevera extract. Same is true for hydroxyl and NO₂ radicals. Trans-membrane release study reveals that there is no significant difference in the amount of Curcumin release from CLAs till initial 30 min, however, it increases steadily thereafter. CLA is found to facilitate efficient release of Curcumin in 5 h, which is higher as compared to the Curcumin alone.