5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) production from fructose and in vitro investigation of anticancer effect

In this study, fructose 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) production and anticancer effect of HMF were investigated. HMF production from fructose was carried out in a stirred pressure reactor and optimized the experimental conditions using response surface method (RSM). Optimum conditions for HMF production were determined as 50 g/l fructose concentration, 40 g/l cationic ion exchange resin (Amberlysts 15 hydrogen form) amount, 120 °C temperature and 104 min time and the HMF efficiency was found to be 59.9 under these conditions. When the fructose concentration is higher than optimum value, the production of HMF is affected in negative because of increase in side product amounts. The amounts of ion exchange resin increased HMF production until optimum value and then the production is not affected. The use of ion exchange resin as catalyst por dehydration of fructose to HMF is important. DMSO which is used as solvent for deydration of fructose to HMF is recovered by evaporation. Thus recovered DMSO is economically important for production of HMF. Morever it was also shown that the used resin can be recovered from the process. The anticancer effect of HMF has been studied in both healthy and cancer cells and has been shown to have anticarcinogenic effect.