Food Chemicals and Epigenetic Targets: An Epi Food Chemical Database.

There is increasing awareness of epigenetics's importance in understanding disease etiologies and developing novel therapeutics. An increasing number of publications in the past few years reflect the renewed interest in epigenetic processes and their relationship with food chemicals. However, there needs to be a recent study that accounts for the most recent advances in the area by associating the chemical structures of food and natural product components with their biological activity. Here, we analyze the status of food chemicals and their intersection with natural products in epigenetic research. Using chemoinformatics tools, we compared quantitatively the chemical contents, structural diversity, and coverage in the chemical space of food chemicals with reported epigenetic activity. As part of this work, we built and curated a compound database of food and natural product chemicals annotated with structural information, an epigenetic target activity profile, and the main source of the food chemical or natural product, among other relevant features. The compounds are cross-linked with identifiers from other major public databases such as FooDB and the collection of open natural products, COCONUT. The compound database, the "Epi Food Chemical Database", is accessible in HTML and CSV formats at https://github.com/DIFACQUIM/Epi_food_Chemical_Database.

Potential Anticancer Activity of Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) Fruits of Different Color: In Vitro and In Silico Evidence.

Pomegranate (PMG; Punica granatum L.) fruits possess a well-balanced nutrient/phytochemical composition, with proven adjuvant benefits in experimental cancer chemotherapy; however, such bioactivity could be affected by PMG's phenogenotype (varietal). Here, the chemical and phytochemical (UPLC-DAD-MS2) composition, antioxidant capacity and anticancer potential [in vitro (MTT assay) and in silico (foodinformatics)] of three PMG fruits of different aryl color [red (cv. Wonderful), pink (cv. Molar de Elche), and white (cv. Indian)] were evaluated. The macro/micronutrient (ascorbic acid, tocols, carotenoids), organic acid (citric/malic), and polyphenol content were changed by PMG's varietal and total antioxidant activity (ABTS, alcoholic > hexane extract) in the order of red > pink > white. However, their in vitro cytotoxicity was the same (IC50 > 200 µg.mL-1) against normal (retinal) and cancer (breast, lung, colorectal) cell lines. Sixteen major phytochemicals were tentatively identified, four of them with a high GI absorption/bioavailability score [Ellagic (pink), vanillic (red), gallic (white) acids, D-(+)-catechin (white)] and three of them with multiple molecular targets [Ellagic (52) > vanillic (32) > gallic (23)] associated with anticancer (at initiation and promotion stages) activity. The anticancer potential of the PMG fruit is phenogenotype-specific, although it could be more effective in nutraceutical formulations (concentrates).