Turmeric a Medicine - Enigmatic Medicinal Actions
Papineni Labs Curcumin Infection Treatment - Clinical Imaging
Turmeric
is a Medicine - established through
centuries by a unique class of researchers practicing Ayurveda, Siddha, and
other old world medicine. Curcumin is a compound in turmeric with the
golden medicinal property. Pongal and Sankaranthi are major Indian Harvest Festival where turmeric is
copiously used by everyone. One can see
loads of young turmeric all over the wet market. 
Waking up on this
Pongal Day, I was really disappointed to see the following commentary titled “Deceptive curcumin offers cautionary tale
for chemists” in one of the premier research journal http://www.nature.com/news/deceptive-curcumin-offers-cautionary-tale-for-chemists-1.21269. The author of the commentary states that the
turmeric extracts dupes assays and leads drug hunters astray. The commentary highlights the review (K. M. Nelson
et al. J. Med. Chem. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jmedchem.6b00975;
2017),
published on 11 January. Here, the
authors published a most comprehensive critical review on curcumin. Their conclusions - no evidence in curcumin’s
therapeutic benefits, despite thousands of research papers and more than 120
clinical trials is a big Jolt! Sad to
notice this auspicious root is getting a bad rap due to improper research
approaches applied by many laboratories in evaluating the curcumin drug action
mechanisms. In many cases, sloppy
science is a factor as discussed by the contributors of the above works.
This turmeric compound
spreads its wings with a predatory effect on a billion dollar market in cure of
a range of diseases from erectile dysfunction, hirsutism, baldness, cancer and
Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, big establishments can go curries in this golden
concoction.
Everyone agrees
turmeric has all the potential to be a true multi-tasking drug. It’s just that, meticulous biochemical and
pharmacological approaches aided with the cutting-edge molecular imaging and
high-throughput assays need to be followed.
Here is a compound, Gold, that
took a millennium to establish its medicinal properties in the east –
scientific community can’t just throw hands up in despair and walk away within
a decade.
In
Papineni Labs, my first attempt with curcumin on human skin disorder was promising.
We designed and developed a Clinical Molecular Imaging System for early
detection of cardiovascular changes in diabetes and other diseases http://www.fasebj.org/content/25/1_Supplement/815.13.short. Using this first of its kind clinical optical
imaging instrument, we tested effects of curcumin on ringworm infection as a
proof-of-principle. Ringworm is a common
fungal infection that appears as patches of red ring on the skin. We used the near infrared fluorescence (NIRF)
imaging to image the infection and subsequent treatment using topical curcumin
application. In this work, non-invasive
autofluorescence imaging was performed utilizing the natural fluorescence
resultant of the fungal infection. Curcumin showed a success where over-
the-counter and prescription drug treatments failed with a subject. Curcumin did show a promise, a larger sample
size and additional methodologies are needed to nail the mode of action. We
reported this fluorescence based methodology at the World Molecular Imaging Congress
WMIC 2011 San Diego, USA and in Bhubaneshwar (Society of Nuclear Medicine-
India 2012).
Yes, our ancestors were
right in terms of the medicinal properties of turmeric. It is just quite complex to isolate the
primary compounds from this elixir and to dissect its mode of action. Not impossible, especially with developments
in Imaging, animal models, mass spectrophotometers, and high throughput drug
screening methods in hand.
Madras (Chennai) News Item:
'
Dr. Rao V. L. Papineni
Professor (Adjunct- assistant)
University of Kansas Medical Center KUMC
USA
Email: Papineni@graduate.hku.hk
Dr. Rao V. L. Papineni is an Adjunct faculty
member at University of Kansas Medical Center, and a molecular theragnostics
scientist at PXI, USA. He received his doctoral degree in
Biochemistry from University of Hong Kong (British Terr). Dr. Papineni had his
early education from University of Madras, where he earned his Bachelors and
Master’s Degree. After ten years in Research and Faculty positions at
University of Hong Kong and Baylor college of Medicine (USA), he joined
Kodak/Carestream Health, USA. Dr. Papineni has made several
inventions and chaired scientific sessions in International Biomedical Meetings
and serves on the editorial board of Nanotech and Experimental Pharmacology
journals. As a distinguished scientist, he initiated advanced
research programs to study Inflammation and oncology utilizing molecular
imaging and nanotechnology based molecular tools. He recently identified
and coined “Radiobioluminescence” a novel X-ray induced radiation phenomena
that have immense potential in development of cancer therapeutic
strategies. His lab is instrumental in development of
MIGRT Molecular Image Guided Radiation Therapy technology and
utilizing radiobiophotonics and MIGRT in Drug Discovery related to Cancer and
radiation medicine.
http://www.radres.org/blogpost/961725/250704/Cancer-Therapy--Radiobiophotonics-with-Rao-Papineni
"Molecular Imaging - Wisdom to See for Maladies to Flee"
Dr. Rao V. L. Papineni
