Abstract
Phytoestrogens constitute an attractive research topic due to their
estrogenic profile and their biological involvement in womanʼs health.
Therefore, numerous studies are currently performed in natural products
chemistry area aiming at the discovery of novel phytoestrogens. The main
classes of phytoestrogens are flavonoids (flavonols, flavanones),
isoflavonoids (isoflavones, coumestans), lignans, stilbenoids as well as
miscellaneous chemical groups abundant in several edible and/or medicinal
plants, belonging mostly to the Leguminosae family. As for other bioactives,
the detection of new structures and more potent plant-derived phytoestrogens
typically follows the general approaches currently available in the natural
product discovery process. Plant-based approaches selected from traditional
medicine knowledge and bioguided concepts are routinely employed. However,
these approaches are associated with serious disadvantages such as
time-consuming, repeated, and labor intensive processes as well as lack of
specificity and reproducibility. In recent years, the natural products
chemistry became more technology-driven, and several different strategies
have been developed. Structure-oriented procedures and miniaturized
approaches employing advanced hyphenated analytical platforms have recently
emerged. They facilitate significantly not only the discovery of novel
phytoestrogens but also the dereplication procedure leading to the
anticipation of major drawbacks in natural products discovery. In this
review, apart from the traditional concepts followed in phytochemistry for
the discovery of novel biologically active compounds, recent applications in
the field of extraction, analysis, fractionation, and identification of
phytoestrogens will be discussed. Moreover, specific methodologies combining
identification of actives and biological evaluation in parallel, such as
liquid chromatography-biochemical detection, frontal affinity
chromatography-mass spectrometry and pulsed ultrafiltration-MS will also be
presented. Finally, miniaturized methods (microchip and biosensor) will be
also discussed.
With the current review, we attempt to give a wide and holistic overview of
the different approaches which could be employed in the discovery of new
phytoestrogens. On the other hand, we anticipate to attract more scientists
to the area of phytoestrogens and to indicate the need of multidisciplinary
concepts.
Key words
phytoestrogens - plant extract - dereplication - extraction - isolation - identification
