Natural product chemistry has formed the scientific basis for the use of plants in traditional medicine and plays an important role in drug discovery as well as in understanding the health-promoting effects of fruits and vegetables and how this effect can be optimized in foods.
A significant part of the prescribed drugs has a natural origin and with more than 200,000 known structures, natural products (secondary metabolites) constitute a highly diversified structural resource for the discovery of new chemical entities with pharmacophoric features. Natural products are therefore considered as a source of lead structures for the development of drugs.
A cornerstone in natural product chemistry research is the use of bioassay-guided fractionation to identify bioactive natural products (BNPs). The approach integrates stepwise chemical fractionation with biological assays, making it possible to identify compounds with specific biological activities from plants, microorganisms, or other sources. This method has contributed to the discovery of numerous pharmaceuticals and is an important tool in drug discovery. We use mainly the bioassay-guided approach to identify BNPs from plants with special focus on BNPs with antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory and/or anticancer effects, where testing in bioassays is done in cooperation with other research groups.
Bioavailability refers to the extent and rate at which the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) or BNP enters the systemic circulation and becomes available at the site of action. Bioavailability is therefore a critical factor in pharmacology and for the understanding of the health-promoting effects of BNPs. To assess the bioavailability of APIs and BNPs as well as their metabolism and excretion in plasma, blood, serum, tissue, and/or urine we use analytical methods such as HPLC-DAD-ELSD and LC-MS.
