Target-based discovery of therapeutic agents from food ingredients

Background Ancient civilizations used natural products as food and as resources to treat various diseases. Today, food ingredients, especially those derived from plants, still play important roles in human nutrition and drug discovery. The health-promoting bioactive compounds or drug candidates need to be identified systematically and efficiently, for developing healthy diets and for alleviating the burden of chronic diseases worldwide. Scope and approach In this multi-disciplinary process, the separation and identification of diverse molecules, the analysis of their interactions with cellular targets, the chemical synthesis, and the animal and clinical trials, are all equally important. The focus of this mini-review is on the initial stage of the process, which is critical to future trends of health foods and food-derived drug discoveries. Through the strategy of targeting the critical proteins involved in many chronic diseases, the bioactive components can be fished out and studied further. Key findings and conclusions Three of the major methodologies to accelerate the discovery of the bioactive components: high throughput screening, phage display technique and virtual screening, are summarized with successful examples. The efficient strategy to identify and further validate the cellular targets, the in silico target prediction and the mass spectroscopy-based proteomics, are also highlighted. To achieve this very promising research goals, through the strategy of targeting the critical proteins involved in many chronic diseases, the establishment of an International Food Ingredients Consortium (IFIC) is proposed.