Main goals of this project are to identify/design interesting bioactive small molecules from plants’ extract, as well as plant cell cultures, and use them as tools to explore the possibility of developing functional foods/drugs, revealing a new physiologically active nutrient ("nutraceutical") and underlining the importance of the use of certain foods in the prevention of diseases correlated with inflammation.
Since drastic phenotype changes are often induced by regulation of gene transcription, this project focuses an attention to compounds capable of modulating some nuclear factors critically involved in the regulation of inflammatory genes. Extracts to be examined will be chosen among Mediterranean and other medicinal herbs/vegetables obtained also from plant cell cultures prepared by IRB. Following purification and identification of bioactive compounds which mainly will be performed by IRB, their mechanism of action and in vivo effect will further be analyzed mainly by Suzuki’s group.
