Curcumin-mediated synthesis of copper-doped TiO2 nanocomposite for potentially promising antioxidant, wound healing, and anti-apoptosis.

The paper provides a green, eco-friendly synthesis and analysis of a novel curcumin-based, copper-doped titanium dioxide nanocomposite (CuO/TiO2 -Curcumin NC). Curcumin was also utilized as a green reducing agent and also capping agent thereby enhancing the biocompatibility and functional surface chemistry of the nanocomposite. Stability of the nanocomposite was established using various forms of analysis. The relative biological studies showed that the synthesized CuO/TiO2 -Curcumin NC had a high antioxidant capacity compared to pure curcumin and ascorbic acid. It also exhibited a strong, dose-dependent cytotoxicity to the breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 that is aggressive. The nanocomposite caused remarkable tumor cell apoptosis which was mainly triggered by excess production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) that caused irreversible damage of mitochondria, and caspase-activation pathways. This nanocomposite showed a concentration-related ability to inhibit the migration and proliferation of cancer cells and thus highlighted its high anti-metastatic capacity. Besides, the copper -titanium nanocomposite (CuO/TiO2-curcumin) had promising in vitro wound -healing effects. Taken together, the present results confirm the CuO/TiO2 -curcumin nanocomposite to be a highly effective, multimodal therapeutic platform, and, therefore, holds a lot of potential in biomedical applications in the future, as an enhanced antioxidant, a powerful anticancer agent, and a scaffold to promote tissue repair and regenerative medicine.