This special issue titled “NEW INSIGHTS ON CHARACTERIZATION AND BIOLOGICAL ACTIVITIES OF NATURAL PRODUCTS” of Letters in Drug Design & Discovery, consists of invited papers, and presents an overview of the different application, recent advances, and biological activities evaluations of natural extract for new drug development. Plants bioactive compounds can be defined as secondary metabolites eliciting pharmacological or toxicological effects in man and animals, and these compounds are unique sources for pharmaceuticals, food additives, flavors, and other industrial materials and applications. Today, as in the past, the sentence “learn from nature” is particularly true. Secondary metabolites and other phytochemicals reveal interesting biological activities against a wide range of human disease without the adverse effects that often are present when a synthetic drug is used and tested. In this special issue are presented papers that show some of the important activities observed for plant-derived materials, from gastroprotective to antimicrobial and antibacterial, and from antioxidant to enzymatic activities. In particular, a work highlights how much of this literature focuses on the activity of the extracts as resulting from secondary metabolites, but without considering the determination of "inorganic toxics", also called heavy metals. These elements are an integral part of the characterization process and the evaluation of the biological activity, over that part of the geographic origin determination. The biological activity also depends greatly from the extraction process that has been applied and the "chemical fingerprint" that is obtained from the quantitative analysis. At the conclusion of this special issue, a review paper is reported that shows all of the latest and new extraction techniques (also following the “Green Chemistry” approaches) and instrumental configurations applied to characterize an extract of natural origin.

New Insights on Characterization and Biological Activities of Natural Products

Marcello Locatelli
2018-01-01

Abstract

This special issue titled “NEW INSIGHTS ON CHARACTERIZATION AND BIOLOGICAL ACTIVITIES OF NATURAL PRODUCTS” of Letters in Drug Design & Discovery, consists of invited papers, and presents an overview of the different application, recent advances, and biological activities evaluations of natural extract for new drug development. Plants bioactive compounds can be defined as secondary metabolites eliciting pharmacological or toxicological effects in man and animals, and these compounds are unique sources for pharmaceuticals, food additives, flavors, and other industrial materials and applications. Today, as in the past, the sentence “learn from nature” is particularly true. Secondary metabolites and other phytochemicals reveal interesting biological activities against a wide range of human disease without the adverse effects that often are present when a synthetic drug is used and tested. In this special issue are presented papers that show some of the important activities observed for plant-derived materials, from gastroprotective to antimicrobial and antibacterial, and from antioxidant to enzymatic activities. In particular, a work highlights how much of this literature focuses on the activity of the extracts as resulting from secondary metabolites, but without considering the determination of "inorganic toxics", also called heavy metals. These elements are an integral part of the characterization process and the evaluation of the biological activity, over that part of the geographic origin determination. The biological activity also depends greatly from the extraction process that has been applied and the "chemical fingerprint" that is obtained from the quantitative analysis. At the conclusion of this special issue, a review paper is reported that shows all of the latest and new extraction techniques (also following the “Green Chemistry” approaches) and instrumental configurations applied to characterize an extract of natural origin.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11564/685011
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