[Metabolomics in research of phytotherapeutics]

Pharmaceutical and food industries are increasingly focused on the great potential of plant secondary metabolites or natural substances which can be used as therapeutics or model compounds for development of new drugs. The paper is devoted to the use of metabolomics, metabolic profiling and metabolic "fingerprint" for the identification of individual active phyto-substances in plant extracts, in profiling of unique groups of plant secondary metabolites that can be used to improve the classification of several species of medicinal plants as well as for a better characterization and quality control of medicinal extracts, tinctures and phytotherapeutic products prepared from these plants. Combined analytical methods and multivariate statistical analysis are used for metabolite identification. Using this approach, medicinal plants are evaluated not only on the basis of a limited number of pharmacologically important metabolites but also based on the fingerprints of minor metabolites and bioactive molecules.