Álvaro Fernández Ochoa

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University of Granada | UGR

Background Interpreting biological system changes requires interpreting vast amounts of multi-omics data. While user-friendly tools exist for single-omics analysis, integrating multiple omics still requires bioinformatics expertise, limiting accessibility for the broader scientific community. Results BiomiX tackles the bottleneck in high-throughpu...

Hypertension remains a prevalent global health issue, with numerous strategies aimed at mitigating its widespread impact. Recently, there has been growing interest in developing nutraceuticals derived from natural bioactive compounds with cardio-protective properties. Brassica microgreens—young, edible seedlings—are rich sources of phytochemicals,...

Lippia citriodora and Olea europaea are known for their shared common bioactivities. Although both matrices are rich in similar families of bioactive compounds, their specific phytochemical compounds are mostly different. Since these compounds can be metabolized in the organism, this study hypothesized that common bioavailable metabolites may contr...

Advances in the understanding of bioavailability and metabolism of bioactive compounds have been achieved primarily through targeted or semi-targeted metabolomics approaches using the hypothesis of potential metabolized compounds. The recent...

BiomiX addresses the data analysis bottleneck in high-throughput omics technologies, enabling the efficient, integrated analysis of multiomics data obtained from two cohorts. BiomiX incorporates diverse omics data. DESeq2/Limma packages analyze transcriptomics data, while statistical tests determine metabolomics peaks. The metabolomics annotation u...

Background Primary Sjögren’s syndrome (pSS) is an autoimmune disease, known for its disabling effect and chronic course. One of the peculiar symptoms is the lachrymal glands dryness associated often but not limited to dry mouth, dental disorders, joint pain, fatigue, and, in severe cases, systemic complications. The most relevant clinical feature i...

Cereal grains play an important role in human health as a source of macro- and micronutrients, besides phytochemicals. The metabolite diversity was investigated in cereal crops and their milling fractions by untargeted metabolomics ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC–MS/MS) of 69 samples: 7 species (barley,...

The Hibiscus sabdariffa (H. sabdariffa) belongs to the Malvaceae family, and originates from Africa. It is characterized by a high polyphenols content (e.g., quercetin and anthocyanins), and has recognized bioactivity, that makes this plant an interesting resource for possible addition of its extracts to dairy beverages and obtain functional bevera...

In this study, flower and leaf extracts of Colvillea racemosa were considered a source of bioactive compounds. In this context, the objective of the study focused on investigating the anticancer potential as well as the phytochemical composition of both extracts. The extracts were analyzed by UPLC-ESI-QTOF-MS, and the bioactivity was tested using i...

Cherry stems, prized in traditional medicine for their potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, derive their efficacy from abundant polyphenols and anthocyanins. This makes them an ideal option for addressing skin aging and diseases. This study aimed to assess the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects of cherry stem extract for pote...

Plant extracts rich in phenolic compounds have been reported to exert different bioactive properties. Despite the fact that there are plant extracts with completely different phenolic compositions, many of them have been reported to have similar beneficial properties. Thus, the structure–bioactivity relationship mechanisms are not yet known in deta...

In the present study, we aimed to investigate the chemical profiles and biological activities of different extracts (ethyl acetate, dichloromethane, ethanol, and water) of Pelargonium endlicherianum parts (aerial parts and roots). Free radical scavenging, reducing power, phosphomolybdenum, and metal chelating were assayed for antioxidant properties...

La metabolómica, como herramienta analítica, ofrece una visión holística de gran cantidad de datos biológicos. Así puede utilizarse este tipo de estudios para analizar los cambios producidos en el organismo luego del consumo de alimentos, y a su vez determinar marcadores químicos que nos den un indicio del camino recorrido por los compuestos bioact...

Untargeted metabolomics is an analytical approach with numerous applications serving as an effective metabolic phenotyping platform to characterize small molecules within a biological system. Data quality can be challenging to evaluate and demonstrate in metabolomics experiments. This has driven the use of pooled quality control (QC) samples for mo...

The constant growth of the cosmetic industry, together with the scientific evidence of the beneficial properties of phytochemicals, has generated great interest in the incorporation of bioactive extracts in cosmetic formulations. This study aims to evaluate the bioactive potential of a mango peel extract for its incorporation into cosmetic formulat...

Actinidia arguta fruit (also known as kiwiberry) has a remarkable phytochemical profile, being reported as a promising preventive agent/treatment for chronic diseases and a desirable source of bioactive molecules for pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. Despite these promising indications, investigating the full potential of A. arguta fruit rema...

Paliurus spina-christi Mill., a member of the Rhamnaceae family, is a traditionally used medicinal plant in the management of a panoply of human ailments. The current research focused on its phytochemical profile and biological properties evaluated by its antioxidant and enzyme inhibitory properties. The methanol extract was found to be the most ef...

Neurodegenerative diseases are known for their wide range of harmful conditions related to progressive cell damage, nervous system connections and neuronal death. These pathologies promote the loss of essential motor and cognitive functions, such as mobility, learning and sensation. Neurodegeneration affects millions of people worldwide, and no int...

The aim of the present study is to investigate the phytochemical composition of tiger nut (TN) (Cyperus esculentus L.) and its neuroprotective potential in scopolamine (Scop)-induced cognitive impairment in rats. The UHPLC-ESI-QTOF-MS analysis enabled the putative annotation of 88 metabolites, such as saccharides, amino acids, organic acids, fatty...

Custard apple (Annona cherimola Mill.) is a tropical fruit source of bioactive compounds whose main producer worldwide is Andalusia, Spain. Because of its processing, the food industry generates large amounts of by-products, such as peels and seeds. These by-products are rich in phenolic compounds with high antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-a...

The avocado is one of the most produced and consumed tropical fruits worldwide, so more than 1.5 million tons of waste are generated per year, especially due to its main by-products: the seed and peel. In order to demonstrate whether these extracts are able to exert health benefits related to oxidative stress, a series of in vitro tests were conduc...

In the present study, the extracts of Cytinus hypocistis (L.) L using both traditional solvents (hexane, ethyl acetate, dichloromethane, ethanol, ethanol/water, and water) and natural deep eutectic solvents (NADESs) were investigated in terms of their total polyphenolic contents and antioxidant and enzyme-inhibitive properties. The extracts were fo...

In recent years, green and advanced extraction technologies have gained great interest to revalue several food by-products. This by-product revaluation is currently allowing the development of high value-added products, such as functional foods, nutraceuticals, or cosmeceuticals. Among the high valued-added products, cosmeceuticals are innovative c...

Tradescantia is a genus of herbaceous and perennial plants belonging to the Commelinaceae family and organized into three infrageneric classifications and 12 sections. More than 80 species within the genus have been used for centuries for medicinal purposes. Phytochem-ical compounds (from various species of the genus) such as coumarins, alkaloids,...

The study of plant phenolic compounds has increased during the last decades due to their bioactive properties as well as their structural variability. This advance has been possible thanks to the development of advanced analytical techniques such as mass spectrometry, chromatographic techniques, and nuclear magnetic resonance. In addition, the deve...

Recently, there has been growing interest in short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) and ketone bodies (KB) due to their potential use as biomarkers of health and disease. For instance, these diet-related metabolites can be used to monitor and reduce the risk of immune response, diabetes, or cardiovascular diseases. Given the interest in these metabolites,...

The study of the bioavailability of bioactive compounds is a fundamental step for the development of applications based on them, such as nutraceuticals, functional foods or cosmeceuticals. It is well-known that these compounds can undergo metabolic reactions before reaching therapeutic targets, which may also affect their bioactivity and possible a...

The increasing production of tropical fruits followed by their processing results in tons of waste, such as skins or seeds. However, these by-products have been reported to be rich in bioactive compounds (BACs) with excellent properties of interest in the cosmeceutical industry: antioxidant, anti-aging, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial and photopro...

A healthy lifestyle is a trendy goal nowadays; for this reason, the consumption of natural food-based on botanical sources has increased. These sources have been reported to possess bioactive compounds such as phenolic compounds, which have demonstrated biological properties for promoting human health. These compounds are secondary metabolites with...

Bioactive ingredients, whether derived from various botanical or animal sources, have acquired important relevance during the last few decades due to a large number of potential applications, which could be useful in food products. An important part of this potential resides in the composition and the concentration of the bioactive constituents. Th...

In this paper, the methanol and water extracts of Phyllanthus reticulatus Poir. leaves and stem bark parts were considered as source of bioactive constituents; thus, chemical analysis and bioactivity assays...

Background Obesity is considered as a global epidemic worldwide. This disorder is associated to several health effects such as metabolic disturbances that need both prevention and treatment actions. In this sense, bioactive secondary metabolites can be obtained from cheap sources such as agro-industrial waste providing a sustainable alternative aga...

The paper reports the chemical composition, antioxidant, six key enzymes inhibitory and antimicrobial activities of two solvent extracts (water and methanol) of leaves and stem bark of Uapaca togoensis. For chemical composition, methanol extract of stem bark exhibited significant higher total phenolic (129.86 mg GAE/g) and flavanol (10.44 mg CE/g)...

Agro-industrial waste represents large economic and environmental problems and is related to a greenhouse gas emissions. However, most of these residues have shown to be a valuable source of bioactive compounds or ingredients that could be used for pharmaceutical, food, cosmetic, and bioenergy industries. The reduction of this waste and the revalor...

The approaches based on high-resolution analytical techniques, such as nuclear magnetic resonance or mass spectrometry coupled to chromatographic techniques, have a determining role in several of the stages necessary for the development of functional foods. The analyses of botanical extracts rich in bioactive compounds is one of the fundamental ste...

Tropical fruits and their by-products show a potential source of bioactive ingredients that are used in the development of new functional foods, nutraceutical supplements, food additives, and cosmetic products. Thus, the extraction of these bioactive ingredients from tropical fruits by green extraction solvents allows the recovery of agro-industria...

Tropical fruits trade is on the rise due to the claimed health benefits related with their consumption. Functional activities are exerted by the presence of bioactive compounds which could be used for prevention or amelioration diseases. However, the occurrence of bioactive compounds is found mainly in non-edible fraction of tropical fruits which a...

Khaya senegalensis A. Juss (Meliaceae) is a popular medicinal plant, widely used in the management of various ailments in the African traditional medicine. This study attempts to investigate into the different extraction methods (homogenizer-assisted extraction (HAE), maceration (MAC), infusion and Soxhlet (SE) extraction) on the pharmacological pr...

Lippia citriodora has been demonstrated to have a wide variety of phytochemicals which provide benefits to human health acting as antioxidants or anti-obesogenics. In this study, these phytochemicals were recovered using a microwave-assisted technology and applying optimal conditions and microencapsulated using spray drying. In this study, two diff...

The aim of this work was to optimize the recovery of phenolic compounds from Lippia citriodora using supercritical fluid extraction (SFE). To achieve this goal, response surface methodology based on a 23 central composite design was used to evaluate the effects of the following experimental factors: temperature, pressure and co-solvent percentage....

Peru is one of the main areas where there are large cocoa crops with special relevance to the economy of this country. In fact, cocoa is a major, economically important, international crop which has been linked to several benefits, such as anti-allergenic, anti-atherogenic, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, anti-oxidant, anti-thrombotic, cardiopro...

Systemic Autoimmune Diseases (SADs) are characterized by dysfunction of the immune system, which cause damage in several tissues and organs. Among these pathologies are systemic lupus erythematosus, systemic sclerosis or scleroderma, Sjögren’s syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, the primary antiphospholipid syndrome, mixed connective tissue disease, an...

Plants from the Gundelia genus have been well appraised as both food and remedies. The members of the Gundelia genus are widely used as foods in several countries including Turkey. This study presents a comparative assessment of two poorly studied Gundelia species (G. glabra Miller and G. dersim Vitek, Yüce & Ergin). The effect of conventional (inf...

Dietary phenolic compounds are considered as bioactive compounds that have effects in different chronic disorders related to oxidative stress, inflammation process, or aging. These compounds, coming from a wide range of natural sources, have shown a pleiotropic behavior on key proteins that act as regulators. In this sense, this review aims to comp...

Data pre-processing of the LC-MS data is a critical step in untargeted metabolomics studies in order to achieve correct biological interpretations. Several tools have been developed for pre-processing, and these can be classified into either commercial or open source software. This case report aims to compare two specific methodologies, Agilent Pro...

Mango consumption has shown bioactive properties against several diseases like diabetes, therefore, we evaluated how a mango-supplemented diet affects metabolic pathways in diabetic rats. Serum and liver samples were collected from 26 rats divided into 3 groups (healthy, untreated diabetic and mango-treated diabetic) after dietary intervention and...

Sjögren’s Syndrome (SjS) is a complex autoimmune disease characterized by the affection of the exocrineglands and the involvement of multiple organs. Although a greater number of biomarker studies havebeen carried out in recent years, the origin and pathogenesis are not yet well known and therefore thereis a need to continue studying this pathology...

Dysbiosis has been described in systemic autoimmune diseases (SADs), including systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), Sjögren’s syndrome (SjS), and primary anti-phosholipid syndrome (PAPS), however the biological implications of these associations are often elusive. Stool and plasma samples from 114 subjects, including in SLE (n = 27), SjS (n = 23), P...

Nutraceuticals and Natural Product Pharmaceuticals analyzes the nutraceutical and pharmaceutical research published over the last decade, paying particular attention to applications and recovery effects. The book emphasizes the great need for both nutritionists and pharmacologists to understand how these drugs can benefit human health. Topics explo...

Sclerocarya birrea is a tree indigenous to Southern Africa with significant importance in rural livelihoods for food, medicine, and carving. The bark, which contains 10-20% tannin, provides several pharmacological benefits as an antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, anti-atherogenic, and antioxidant medication, among others. This study co...

The METTEN study assessed the efficacy, tolerability, and safety of adding metformin to neoadjuvant chemotherapy plus trastuzumab in early HER2-positive breast cancer (BC). Women with primary, non-metastatic HER2-positive BC were randomized (1:1) to receive metformin (850 mg twice-daily) for 24 weeks concurrently with 12 cycles of weekly paclitaxel...

Garlic (Allium sativum) has been described as containing phytonutrients with healthy properties. In this study, the effect of a bioactive garlic food supplement intake on human plasma metabolome was examined with the aim of understanding the mechanisms of action and involved pathways responsible for beneficial effects. With this purpose, a dietary...

Systemic Sclerosis (SSc) is a chronic autoimmune disease whose origin and pathogenesis are not yet well known. Recent studies are allowing a better definition of the disease. However, few studies have been performed based on metabolomics. In this way, this study aims to find altered metabolites in SSc patients in order to improve their diagnosis, p...

Intestinal microbiota has been associated with systemic autoimmune diseases, yet the functional consequences of these associations are elusive. We characterized the fecal microbiota (16S rRNA gene amplification and sequencing) and the plasma metabolome (high‐performance liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry) in 59 patients with systemi...

Phenolic compounds in rosemary have shown antiproliferative/cytotoxic activity against colorectal cancer cells. The aim of this work was to study in depth the absorption and metabolism of the compounds present in a rosemary extract. An in-situ perfusion assay was performed in mice, for which samples of gastrointestinal liquid taken at different tim...