Bioactive Phytochemicals: Biosynthesis and Functional Role In Planta, and Health-Promoting Effects in Animals and Humans

Dear Colleagues,

In evolutionary terms, phytochemical diversity determined the success of plant organisms as well as their adabtability to a changing (and challenging) environment. Indeed, plants are sessile organisms not able to escape from stressfull conditions such as high light and UV radiations, extreme meteorological events, adverse climatic conditions, pollutants, pathogens and phytophages. In these scenario, secondary metabolites protect plant from biotic, abiotic and environmental stresses, by virtue of their antimicrobial, antifeedant and antioxidant activities just to name a few. Since plants represent a staple food source for animals (including humans), the latter have been exposed to phytochemicals from the time of their appearance on earth. Therefore, a coevolution between human and plant bioactives - that are xenobiotics - occurred. In the last decades, a huge amount of preclinical (i.e. in vitro and in vivo) studies indicated that phytochemicals exert a plethora of biological and pharmacological activities in cell cultures and animal models, though the evidence in humans is less substantiated and still fragmentary. Nowdays, we know that bioactive phytochemicals possess antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant/prooxidant, cytotoxic and immunomodulating activities, inter alia, which make them promising cardioprotective, neuroprotective, anticancer, antidiabetes, antiobesity and antiaging agents. However, phytochemicals appear to be more effective in prevention than in treatment of chronic-degenerative diseases. This is the case of healthy diets rich in plant foods. Not least, phytochemicals can be used as adjuvants in association with conventional therapies in order to improve their efficacy, reduce their adverse effects, decrease the risk of selecting resistant microbial strains or cancer cells or even revert resistance.

In this very wide context, we invite investigators to submit both original research and review articles that explore all these aspects.

Prof. Dr. Marcello Iriti
Guest Editor

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