{"id":53122,"date":"2019-04-01T15:38:03","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T20:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fomatmedical.com\/?p=10694"},"modified":"2026-05-07T10:28:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T17:28:36","slug":"plant-metabolomics-drug-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fomatmedical.com\/es\/blogs-updates\/plant-metabolomics-drug-discovery\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00bfQu\u00e9 contiene esta planta? El mejor sistema automatizado para encontrar posibles medicamentos."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Plant Metabolomics Drug Discovery: 3 Powerful New Research Findings<\/h3>\n

Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science in Japan have developed a new computational mass spectrometry system that dramatically expands the scope of plant metabolomics drug discovery. When tested on tissues from 12 plant species, the system identified over 1,000 metabolites, including dozens never previously detected, among them compounds with antibiotic, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and anti-cancer potential. According to the Mayo Clinic<\/a>, natural plant compounds have historically been the basis for many important medicines, making systematic identification of new metabolites a significant area of pharmaceutical research.<\/p>\n

Why Plant Metabolomics Drug Discovery Has Been So Slow<\/h3>\n

Plants represent an almost infinite resource for drug discovery, yet scientists currently have knowledge of only about 5% of all natural plant products. There are millions of plant species, each with its own metabolome, the complete set of all metabolic products that organism produces. Standard mass spectrometry can confirm whether a known molecule is present in a sample, but it cannot search for molecules that have not yet been identified.<\/p>\n

The history of drug development from plants illustrates how slow this process has been. Aspirin, derived from willow bark extract, was described in ancient clay tablets thousands of years before scientists understood how it worked biochemically. Computational mass spectrometry, the growing research field at the center of the RIKEN team’s work, aims to address this gap by finding previously unknown metabolites and predicting their functions at a scale that was previously impossible.<\/p>\n

How the New System Works<\/h3>\n

Led by Hiroshi Tsugawa and Kazuki Saito, the RIKEN team spent several years developing a computational system that incorporates new algorithms for comparing mass spectrometry outputs from plants labeled with carbon-13 against those that are not. The algorithms can predict the molecular formulas of metabolites, classify them by type, predict the substructure of unknown compounds, and link them to known metabolites based on structural similarities, allowing the system to infer potential functions even for molecules that have never been characterized before.<\/p>\n

As Tsugawa explained, while no software can comprehensively identify every metabolite in a living organism, the new program incorporates techniques that provide ten times the coverage of previous plant metabolomics drug discovery methods.<\/p>\n

3 Powerful Plant Metabolomics Drug Discovery Findings<\/h3>\n

1. The System Found More Than 1,000 Metabolites Where Standard Methods Found About 100<\/h4>\n

In direct comparisons, standard mass spectrometry based methods identified approximately 100 metabolites in the test samples. The new computational plant metabolomics drug discovery system identified more than 1,000. This tenfold increase in coverage represents a fundamental step change in the throughput of natural product screening and opens the door to identifying therapeutic candidates that have been invisible to existing methods.<\/p>\n

2. Novel Antibiotic and Anti-inflammatory Compounds Were Identified in Common Plants<\/h4>\n

The system successfully characterized benzoxazinoids, a class of antibiotics, in rice and maize, and glycoalkaloids, a class with anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties, in common onion, tomato, and potato. These are plants that have been studied extensively for centuries, yet the plant metabolomics drug discovery system found biologically significant compounds that had not been previously documented in these species.<\/p>\n

3. Two Classes of Anti-Cancer Metabolites Were Detected in Food Plants<\/h4>\n

The system identified triterpene saponins with anti-cancer properties in soybeans and licorice, and beta-carboline alkaloids with anti-cancer potential in a plant from the coffee family. The detection of anti-cancer metabolites in commonly consumed food plants using this plant metabolomics drug discovery approach suggests that biologically active compounds may be far more widespread in the natural world than current knowledge reflects.<\/p>\n

What This Means for Future Drug Development<\/h3>\n

The implications of this computational platform extend well beyond plants. Tsugawa noted that the next goal is to apply the same methodology to global identification of human and microbiota metabolomes, with newly discovered metabolites to be further investigated through genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics. In accelerating the identification of natural products with pharmaceutical potential, this plant metabolomics drug discovery system could significantly compress the timeline from natural compound identification to clinical investigation.<\/p>\n

FOMAT conducts Phase I through Phase IV clinical research across a national network of investigator sites throughout the United States. To learn more about active studies across therapeutic areas, visit our patient active studies page<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Descubrimiento de f\u00e1rmacos mediante la metabol\u00f3mica vegetal: tres nuevos y prometedores hallazgos de investigaci\u00f3n. Investigadores del Centro RIKEN para la Ciencia de los Recursos Sostenibles, en Jap\u00f3n, han desarrollado un nuevo sistema computacional de espectrometr\u00eda de masas que ampl\u00eda considerablemente el alcance del descubrimiento de f\u00e1rmacos mediante la metabol\u00f3mica vegetal. Cuando se prob\u00f3 en\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":111256,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[968],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs-updates"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fomatmedical.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fomatmedical.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fomatmedical.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fomatmedical.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fomatmedical.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fomatmedical.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fomatmedical.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fomatmedical.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fomatmedical.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fomatmedical.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}