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The aim of this work is to provide a critical review of plant furanocoumarins from different points of view, including their chemistry and biosynthetic pathways to their extraction, analysis, and synthesis, to the main biological activities found for these active compounds, in order to highlight their potential within pharmaceutical science. The limits and the possible improvements needed for research involving these molecules are also highlighted and discussed.

Cannabis sativa L. represents one of the most widely used source of drugs and drugs of abuse worldwide. Its biologically active compounds are mainly cannabinoids, including Δ 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which is responsible for the psychoactive effects, tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THCA), cannabinol (CBN), cannabidiol (CBD), and cannabidiolic acid (CBDA). Together with recreational and drug-type (or medicinal) Cannabis, some new products have been recently released into the market as fiber-type Cannabis variants (also known as hemp or industrial hemp) with low THC content and high content of nonpsychoactive CBD. In this research work, the aim was to characterize Cannabis recreational and drug-type samples by quantifying their active principles, after the development and validation of a suitable analytical method. In addition to the Cannabis samples described above, fiber-type plant varieties were also analyzed to monitor their content of nonpsychoactive compounds for both pharmaceutical and nutraceutical purposes. To do this, a highly efficient HPLC−DAD− MS/MS method, with an electrospray ionization (ESI) source and a triple-quadrupole mass analyzer acquiring in the multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode also coupled to a diode array detector (DAD), was developed and applied. Satisfactory validation results were obtained in terms of precision (RSD < 6.0% for all the analytes) and accuracy (>92.1% for all the compounds). The proposed methodology represents a versatile and reliable tool to assess both psychoactive and nonpsychoactive cannabinoid levels in Cannabis samples for a more rational use in both medicinal chemistry and nutraceutics.

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