Methods for the Chemical Analysis and Separation of Compounds in Plants

Dear Colleagues,

In the last 20–30 years, a growing trend has been observed around the identification and use of products that have no harmful effects, minimal side-effects, and fit most naturally to the human body. This trend has led to the return of healthcare specialists to nature and plants, but with a modern approach that explicitly questions how plants help to heal humans, and what their exact effects on the human body are—as is evident from the increased number of recent studies on the therapeutic properties of plants. The question of how plants work on the human body is linked to the phytochemical composition of vegetal material, which is a complex matrix with a high number of organic compounds that must be separated in order to be identified. This can be achieved using modern, high-tech, hyphenated chromatographic methods that not only ensure the separation of bioactive compounds from plants but also provide us with plenty of information to be able to identify them. Modern healthcare professionals need more than just to know the phytochemical profile of a plant used in therapy; they also need to be able to link it to a biological activity, to explain the plant’s mechanism of action and therapeutic effect.

This Special Issue is open to expert reviews and original contributions in the field of phytochemistry, including papers on the use of modern analytical methods to identify bioactive compounds in different plant species and to demonstrate the biological activities linked to the identified compound’s profile. Specifically, we invite submissions on all topics related to plant analysis, including chromatographic and spectral analyses, and in vitro or in vivo demonstration of plants’ or plant-origin bioactive compounds’ biological activities.

This Special Issue also aims to allow scientists to correlate the phytochemical profile of plants with the demonstrated biological activities, which could later support health-related claims of medicines based on plants or botanical food supplements in the regulatory field.

Dr. Neli Kinga Olah
Dr. Daniela Hanganu
Dr. Violeta Turcuș
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Phytochemical analysis
• Chromatography
• Spectrophotometry
• Biological activity
• Antioxidant capacity
• Antibacterial effect
• Enzyme inhibition
• Plant-origin bioactive compounds
• Plants