Accumulation of amyloid-beta (A beta) peptides in a brain is closely related with the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. To suppress the production of A beta peptides, we propose novel curcumin derivatives and investigate their binding properties with the amyloid precursor protein (APP), using protein-ligand docking as well as ab initio molecular simulations. Our proposed derivative (curcumin XIV) is found to have a large binding energy with APP and interacts strongly with the cleavage site Ala19 by secretase. It is thus expected that curcumin XIV can protect APP from the secretase attack and be a potent inhibitor against the production of A beta peptides. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.