Phytochemical Study and In Vitro Screening Focusing on the Anti-Aging Features of Various Plants of the Greek Flora.

Skin health is heavily affected by ultraviolet irradiation from the sun. In addition, senile skin is characterized by major changes in the collagen, elastin and in the hyaluronan content. Natural products (NPs) have been shown to delay cellular senescence or in vivo aging by regulating age-related signaling pathways. Moreover, NPs are a preferable source of photoprotective agents and have been proven to be useful against the undesirable skin hyperpigmentation. Greek flora harvests great plant diversity with approximately 6000 plant species, as it has a wealth of NPs. Here, we report an extensive screening among hundreds of plant species. More than 440 plant species and subspecies were selected and evaluated. The extracts were screened for their antioxidant and anti-melanogenic properties, while the most promising were further subjected to various in vitro and cell-based assays related to skin aging. In parallel, their chemical profile was analyzed with High-Performance Thin-Layer Chromatography (HPTLC) and/or Ultra-Performance Liquid Chromatography High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry (UPLC-HRMS). A variety of extracts were identified that can be of great value for the cosmetic industry, since they combine antioxidant, photoprotective, anti-melanogenic and anti-aging properties. In particular, the methanolic extracts of Sideritis scardica and Rosa damascena could be worthy of further attention, since they showed interesting chemical profiles and promising properties against specific targets involved in skin aging.

A Metabolomic Study of Biomarkers of Habitual Coffee Intake in Four European Countries.

SCOPE: The goal of this work is to identify circulating biomarkers of habitual coffee intake using a metabolomic approach, and to investigate their associations with coffee intake in four European countries. METHODS AND RESULTS: Untargeted mass spectrometry-based metabolic profiling is performed on serum samples from 451 participants of the European Prospective Investigation on Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) originating from France, Germany, Greece, and Italy. Eleven coffee metabolites are found to be associated with self-reported habitual coffee intake, including eight more strongly correlated (r = 0.25-0.51, p < 10E-07 ). Trigonelline shows the highest correlation, followed by caffeine, two caffeine metabolites (paraxanthine and 5-Acetylamino-6-amino-3-methyluracil), quinic acid, and three compounds derived from coffee roasting (cyclo(prolyl-valyl), cyclo(isoleucyl-prolyl), cyclo(leucyl-prolyl), and pyrocatechol sulfate). Differences in the magnitude of correlations are observed between countries, with trigonelline most highly correlated with coffee intake in France and Germany, quinic acid in Greece, and cyclo(isoleucyl-prolyl) in Italy. CONCLUSION: Several biomarkers of habitual coffee intake are identified. No unique biomarker is found to be optimal for all tested populations. Instead, optimal biomarkers are shown to depend on the population and on the type of coffee consumed. These biomarkers should help to further explore the role of coffee in disease risk.