Phytochemical derivatives, production

Phytochemicals derived from eatable plants represent a remarkable source of bioactive compounds. In a recent study, Jensen et al. [41] performed a high-throughput analysis of phytochemicals in order to uncover associations between diet and health benefits using text mining and chemoinformatic methods. The first step of that study involved the extraction of associations between the terms of plants and phytochemicals, analyzing 21 million abstracts in PubMed/MEDLINE covering the period 1998-2012. This information was merged with the Chinese Natural Product Database and the Ayurveda dataset, which was also curated by the authors. The final dataset contained almost 37000 phytochemicals. A remarkable outcome... 

A marine nutraceutical is defined as a marine-derived substance that can be used as a dietary supplement or a food ingredient that provides a medicinal or health benefit beyond basic nutrition [Barrow, C.. and F. Shahidi (2008). Marine Nutraceuticals and Functional Foods. CRC Press. 494 pp.] Cosmoceuticals are cosmetic products with drug-like benefits conferred by ingredients such as vitamins, phytochemicals, enzymes, antioxidants, and essential oils. 

The present volume is based on the proceedings of the international conference entitled Biodiversity A Source of New Leads for the Pharmaceutical and Agrochemical Industries held at the University of St. Andrews in.September 1999. This was organised by the Biotechnology Group of the Industrial Division of The Royal Society of Chemistry, as was the preceding meeting on Phytochemical Diversity held at the University of Sussex in 1996. Whereas the primary topic of the earlier conference was industrially useful plant products, the current volume is of wider scope and includes substances derived from microbial, marine and plant sources. 

Many phytochemicals and nutraceutical ingredients are derived from botanicals. In the manufacture of many of these nutraceuticals, processes begin with the extraction of plant materials using a suitable solvent. Many technologies and types of equipment exist to achieve this solid-liquid extraction. To successfully choose and operate the proper equipment for producing the desired product in an economic manner, the fundamentals of equilibrium and mass transfer must be understood. Once these fundamentals are understood, they can be applied to the botanical raw material of interest and the chemical properties of the desired phytochemical to select and operate the most cost-effective extraction equipment. 

Noteworthy results in the phytochemical studies, the N-oxides of several Amaryllidaceae alkaloids have been found for the first time in Amaryllidaceae plants, accompanied by the corresponding free bases (52) ungiminor-ine A-oxide (10) (from Pancratium maritimum), and O-methyllycorenine A-oxide (329) and homolycorine A-oxide (330) (from Lapiedra maritinezii). The stereochemistry of their nitrogen atoms was deduced based on 2D NOESY experiments. Furthermore, it has been established that these A-oxide derivatives are genuine natural products, and not artifacts, by the demonstration that the free bases are not converted into A-oxides when subjected to the same extraction procedure. It is noteworthy that the A-oxides have been isolated accompanied by the corresponding free bases. 

Diastereoselective halogenations using removable chiral auxiliaries have been the purpose of recent significant developments. a-Halo aldehydes, a-halo ketones and a-halo carboxylic acid derivatives are very useful precursors involved for total syntheses of pharmaceutical drugs and phytochemicals. In most cases, the biological activity is associated with one of the two enantiomers. So, diastereoselective halogenation of carbonyl compounds and carboxylic acid derivatives has attracted considerable attention in recent years, as a tool for the production of enantiomerically pure substances. The numerous examples of diastereoselective halogenation of compounds with non removable chiral adjuvants are outside the scope of this review. 

The diterpenoids are a large and ubiquitous family of isoprenoids derived from 2E,61% ] 0 -geranylgeranvl pyrophosphate. Of all the families of natural products, the diterpenoids have one of the widest ranges of biological activity. The clearest classification of the cyclic diterpenoids (abietane, labdane, clerodane,...) is based on biogenetic considerations. The variety of structural types found amongst the diterpenoids has led to their use as phytochemical markers. Indeed, many of the diterpenoids found in recent years have been isolated in the course of phytochemical surveys of the Compositae. 

Considerable interest is given nowadays to the possibility of using natural products as parasiticides in agriculture to replace or enhance phytochemical products, because of the serious environmental problems caused by the often indiscriminate use of pesticides. Massive use of synthetic fungicides against parasites has led to the appearance of strains which are resistant to both the dicarboximide derivatives (iprodione, procymidone, vinclozolin [64-65] and the benzimidazoles (benomyl, carbendazim, thio-phanates, etc.) [66-67] making it much more difficult to control the pathogens. 

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