The Essential Medicinal Chemistry of Curcumin

Nelson KM, Dahlin JL, Bisson J, Graham J, Pauli GF, Walters MA · Journal of Medicinal Chemistry

The field's standing objection. Curcumin is classed as both a pan-assay interference compound and an invalid metabolic panacea: it is chemically unstable, reactive with many protein targets non-specifically, and essentially non-bioavailable, which the authors argue makes much of its reported in-vitro activity artefactual.

Population

The curcumin medicinal-chemistry and screening literature

Intervention

Curcumin as a drug-discovery lead

Limitations

A medicinal-chemistry critique, not a clinical one — its claim that no double-blind placebo-controlled trial of curcumin has succeeded was contestable in 2017 and is contradicted by later knee-osteoarthritis trials. It is retained because its charge against the in-vitro mechanism literature stands independently of the clinical results.