Grant: Engage Grants Program

In living organisms, the oxidant/antioxidant unbalance plays a pivotal role in different pathophysiologicalconditions. General and specific antioxidants prevent the oxidative damage on biological targets and an intakeof antioxidants is inversely associated with the risk to develop some pathologies.The Devonian Health Group isa late stage botanical pharmaceutical corporation with novel approaches to develop drugs and pharmaceuticalsproducts including antioxidants. It is known that different antioxidants vary in their reducing power andmechanism of action, and the cooperation of different antioxidants, in a botanical extract for example, providesgreater protection against oxidants than compound alone. Different chemical-based assays have been developedto determine antioxidant capacity. However, to study the potential antioxidant health-promoting effects ofnatural products, considering the complexity involved in their in vivo mechanisms of action, a single in vitrochemical assay is not enough to evaluate and compare their antioxidant properties. Therefore, the presentproject proposes to develop a Standardized Procedure to Assess Total Antioxidant Efficiency (SPATAE) thatwill be employed for screening antioxidant capacity, activity and effects of Devonian samples. In particular, wepropose the combination of chemical-, biological-, and cellular-based assay to evaluate antioxidant efficiencyat multiple biological levels. In the selection of the assays to include in the SPATAE, we aim to measurechemistry actually occuring in potential application using simple methods with defined endpoint and chemicalmechanism also good within-run and between-day reproductibility. Without standardization, marketing ofbotanicals ans associated products becomes arbitrary and technological development of botanicalpharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals is hindered.