Catalytic Asymmetric Hydrophosphination as a Valuable Tool to Access Dihydrophosphinated Curcumin and Its Derivatives

Curcumin and its derivatives were successfully functionalized with a series of secondary phosphines via catalytic asymmetric dihydrophosphination to give enantioenriched products with up to 95% enantiomeric excess (ee). Subsequently, the medicinal activities of dihydrophosphinated-curcumin gold(I) complexes obtained from the in situ complexation of dihydro-phosphinated-curcumin with gold(I) were evaluated using the MKN74 and MCF7 cancer cell lines and compared to existing drugs such as curcumin and cisplatin.