Turmeric-derived mesoporous carbon as a bioactive material: In vitro anticancer, antidiabetic, and anti-inflammatory...

Breast cancer, diabetes, and chronic inflammatory diseases are major global health challenges, which call for the development of effective biomaterials with potential biomedical applications. In this work, Curcuma longa based mesoporous carbon material (CCL) has been successfully prepared through NaOH-assisted chemical activation and examined in depth for physicochemical and biomedical properties. Results of this experiment indicate successful synthesis of mesoporous carbon material with an average pore size, surface area, and stability temperature of 3.80 nm, 1394.5 m²/g, and 800 °C, respectively. The CCL showed considerable antioxidant activity with an IC₅₀ value of 76.25 ± 2.13 and 68.58 ± 2.12 μg/mL in the DPPH and superoxide radical scavenging assays, respectively. Notable antidiabetic effect have also been found with α-amylase and α-glucosidase inhibitory activities, which described an IC₅₀ value of 89.86 ± 3.25 and 98.65 ± 1.97 μg/mL, respectively. Strong anti-inflammatory capacity has been found in protein-denaturing assay with an IC₅₀ of 72.49 ± 0.62 μg/mL. The material showed high anticancer activity against triple-negative breast cancer cells (MDA-MB-231) with an IC₅₀ value of 24.97 μg/mL and showed apoptosis. The comparative analysis with various previous reports on turmeric-derived materials represents significantly high anticancer activity in this formulation. The synthesized material exhibited enhanced anticancer activity compared with previously reported turmeric-derived materials. Together with its observed antidiabetic and anti-inflammatory activities, these results highlight its potential as a bioactive material for further in-vitro and in-vivo studies.