Abstract

Curcumin is extracted from turmeric exhibiting several biomedical activities. Unfortunately, less aqueous solubility was still a drawback to apply it in medicine. This study introduced a method to produce a thermosensitive nanocomposite hydrogel (nCur-PG) containing curcumin nanoparticles (nCur) which can overcome the poor dissolution of curcumin. Regarding to the method, a thermo-reversible pluronic F127-grafted gelatin (PG) play a role as surfactant to disperse and protect nanocurcumin from aggregation. The synthetic PG was identified by 1H-NMR. The obtained results via Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) indicated that the size of nCur was various in the range from 1.5 ± 0.5 to 128 ± 9.7 nm belong to amount of the fed curcurmin. The nCur-dispersed PG solution formed nCur-PG when the solution was warmed up to 34-35 oC. Release profile indicated sustainable release of curcumin from hydrogel. Thermosensitive nanocomposite hydrogel based pluronic-grafted gelatin and nanocurcumin performed potential application of the biomaterial in tissue regeneration.