Research Trends in Plant-Derived Oligomers for Health Applications

Abstract

Objective: Epidemiological data illustrates that there is a strong relationship between dietary intake of natural bioactive compounds and their beneficial properties against various diseases, and this stimulates academic and industrial interest in using plant-derived compounds for health and medicine. For this reason, recent health related studies in the literature have focused on a variety of many plant-derived bioactive compounds. Even though the bioactivities of such compounds have widely been investigated, there are few studies about oligomeric species and their activities. Methods: In this review, extraction and isolation methods of the plant-derived oligomers and the use of such oligomers in health applications is summarised. Results: In the literature, many studies state that oligomeric compounds have beneficial to human health. To maximize these beneficial properties, various ways to use oligomeric compounds have been examined and summarised. Conclusion: A better understanding of the specific activities of distinct components of plant-derived oligomers is expected to open new avenues for drug discovery. This review gives an overview of oligomers with health beneficial properties and their possible applications in healthcare.

Extraction of High-Value Chemicals from Plants for Technical and Medical Applications

“…The strive for sustainability in industry motivates the consideration of plants as a source of biorenewable feedstocks, due to their abundance, the range of molecules they produce and our ability to employ engineering biology to generate new/valuable biomolecules [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. Plants produce primary metabolites, which are common to most organisms (such as fats, proteins and sugars), and the more diverse secondary metabolites (species-specific, expressing various bioactives [ 4 , 5 ], and potentially therapeutic [ 6 ], used for the treatment of cancer, heart disease, circulatory disease and viral infection [ 7 ]).…”