A nanotised form of pure curcumin was developed by the lead researcher Professor Santosh Kumar Kar at the KIIT University here.
Since nano curcumin showed about five times better bioavailability than the natural curcumin. Its therapeutic efficacy was tested in mice for various human disease conditions like malaria, cancer and tuberculosis. It was shown that bioavailable curcumin when fed to mice infected with the rodent malaria, the untreated mice died in a few days while the nano curcumin fed mice controlled the infection and survived. This observation has been published in Advances in Biotechnology.
Encouraged by this observation the nano curcumin was tested in a mouse model of breast cancer in collaboration with Prof Gaurisankar Sa of Bose Institute, Kolkata. Nano curcumin was found to modulate T regulatory cell responses and was effective in controlling tumor growth in mouse. This observation has been published in the journal Immunology.
Further, all the drugs used for treatment of TB are very toxic and their prolonged use damages the liver and other organs. But in an animal model of TB, use of nano curcumin along with Isoniazid reduces the time for cure by 50 per cent without any side effects.
The work was done in collaboration with Prof Gobardhan Das, of Centre of Molecular Medicine, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Realizing that curcumin can help in wound healing, Prof Biswabandita Kar of School of Technology, KIIT University and Dr Bansidhar Mulia from KIMS formed a team and guided three students for their MVSc thesis which has been completed. The research was done under their supervision at the Department of Veterinary Surgery and Radiology, College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, OUAT, Bhubaneswar by the team of Prof Jayakrishna Das. It has shown remarkable effect on the healing of difficult wounds of dogs.
Mouth wash prepared from nano curcumin was tested by the team of Dr Hemamalini Rath, SCB Medical College and Hospital, Cuttack involving human volunteers.