The importance of
characterization of natural products with biological activity
Shiming Li
Department of Food
Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New jersey, USA and College of Life
Sciences, Huanggang Normal University, Hubei
Province, China
Natural
products have been a rich source for discovery of many world’s
most commonly used therapeutic drugs.
In view of the growing need for effective medicines and health promoting
products, the potential for natural products to serve as safe and effective
medicinal and natraceutical agents has gained
increasing attention. However,
multiple molecular extracts must be chemically characterized and rigorously
evaluated biologically to insure adequate consistency in the performance of in
vitro bioactivity and in vivo efficacy.
The research in this field has been plagued by inconsistencies due in
part to inadequate chemical characterization and documentation, making result
comparison among different biological studies very difficult. Modern analytical
chemistry and molecular evaluation methods now exist to insure sufficient
transparency to avoid this limitation.
Furthermore, our understanding of the complexity of some diseases such as
inflammation and cancer has advanced to enable significant insight into the
mechanism of action of these natural extracts. Here, we discuss the value of natural
products as anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer agents, review approaches for
their biological and chemical evaluation, and highlight challenges to the
field. We present two examples,
black tea extracts and citrus peel extracts, highlighting the overall rigorous
use of cell, molecular, and chemical methods for
characterization and quality control as templates for future studies of
biological activity of natural products.