Curcumin Encapsulation in Aluminum Fumarate Metal–Organic Frameworks for Enhanced Stability and Antioxidant Activity

Curcumin (Cur) is a great candidate for antioxidant applications; however, due to its low solubility and poor bioavailability, it remains only hardly employed as a therapeutic agent. Moreover, curcumin is very unstable and tends to degrade quickly. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have gained great attention in the field of drug loading due to their diversity and tunability, so they are seen as great candidates for hosting curcumin. Aluminum fumarate MOF (AlMOF) was able to hold curcumin successfully by the wet impregnation technique. The resulting system significantly increased the stability of curcumin, so it went from degrading to 58.9% after 3 days to degrading to 16% after 10 days when entrapped in AlMOF. In addition, the antioxidant activity of curcumin was also greatly boosted in the MOF-Cur system compared to curcumin in its free state. These results open the door to an in-depth study of MOF-Cur systems as great therapeutic agents due to the enhancement of the therapeutic properties of curcumin, all while protecting it, favoring its solubility, and maintaining its stability.