Medicinal plants can make a substantial contribution to reducing the incidence of chronic degenerative pathologies, including cardiovascular diseases and cancer, says Indena
On the occasion of the XIV International Symposium on Atherosclerosis in Rome, Paolo Morazzoni, president of the scientific board of Indena, is to give a master lecture on how standardised extracts of edible plants can be used to optimise nutrition.
The plants most widely used to combat cardiovascular and dysmetabolic disorders are those containing high amounts of polyphenols, antioxidant molecules which have proved to be active in counteracting radical scavenging-related diseases.
This group of plants includes Vitis vinifera (grape seed), Vaccinium myrtillus (bilberry), Camellia sinensis (green tea) and Olea europaea (olive).
Other edible plants however have recently attracted the attention of researchers: their biologically active ingredients have been generally identified as proteins which, with various mechanisms, can help also provide relief in dysmetabolic disorders: Phaseoulus vulgaris (the well known bean), Lupinus albus (lupin), Glycine max (soy).
In this perspective, "Standardised products obtained from well known plants such as tea, grape, bilberry and olive tree help maintain healthy physiological functions and reduce the risk of some of the major pathologies, of which cardiovascular and dysmetabolic disorders represent an increasing part", said Paolo Morazzoni.
Indena's technological expertise in both production and analytical techniques have enabled the development of edible plant extracts, with an extremely high degree of standardisation, which, in some cases, includes the identification and quantification of each single component of the complex mixture.
"In order to obtain biological data which can be safely and effectively reproduced", continued Morazzoni, "the botanical extract must contain the same active ingredients over time: it should also be stable and devoid of unpredictable toxicity and any side effects".
Indena is committed to guaranteeing quality in this field, through rigorous standardisation, based on good agricultural practices (GAP) and good manufacturing practices (GMP), together with analytical quantitative techniques (HPLC, HPLC-MS) and semi-quantitative techniques (NMR, FT-IR and NIR spectroscopy).
These enable the industrial preparation of highly reproducible extracts of plants, which are often endowed with exciting biological properties.
