Jonathan Bisson

University of Illinois at Chicago | UIC · Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences

High-throughput biology has contributed a wealth of data on chemicals, including natural products (NPs). Recently, attention was drawn to certain, predominantly synthetic, compounds that are responsible for disproportionate percentages of hits but are false actives. Spurious bioassay interference led to their designation as pan-assay interference c...

The present study demonstrates the importance of adequate precision when reporting the delta and J parameters of frequency domain H-1 NMR (HNMR) data. Using a variety of structural dasses (terpenoids, phenolics, alkaloids) from different taxa (plants, cyanobacteria), this study develops rationales that explain the importance of enhanced precision i...

Dimeric stilbene glucosides 1-3 [two diastereomers of (-)-gnemonoside A (1a and 1b), (-)-gnemonoside C (2), and (-)-gnemonoside D (3)] as well as a mixture of the two enantiomers of gnetin C (4) were isolated from the rhizomes of Gnetum africanum. The two enantiomers of gnetin C, (+)-4 and (-)-4, were obtained from the aglycones of 1a and 1b, respe...

The phytochemical study of the root extract of the stilbenoid-rich Vitis riparia×Vitis berlandieri grapevine was carried out by centrifugal partition chromatography (CPC). For this reason, we developed a new elution mode we named back-step, which allowed us to obtain cleaner fractions and a more efficient separation process when used in conjunction...

Phytochemical investigation of Marsypopetalum modestum (Annonaceae) led to the isolation of a new phenylpropanoid glycoside, lyciumphenylpropanoid B (10), along with nine known compounds (1-9) from an aqueous methanolic extract of the stem. Most compounds are reported from this genus for the first time. The structures of the isolated compounds were...

Contemporary bioinformatic and chemoinformatic capabilities hold promise to reshape knowledge management, analysis and interpretation of data in natural products research. Currently, reliance on a disparate set of non-standardized, insular, and specialized databases presents a series of challenges for data access, both within the discipline and for...

Flavonoids are a vast group of metabolites that are essential for vascular plant physiology and, thus, occur ubiquitously in plant-based/-derived foods. The solitary designation of thousands of known flavonoids hides the fact that their metabolomes are structurally highly diverse, consist of disparate subgroups, yet undergo a certain degree of meta...

With the recent explosion of information, Natural Products (NP) research critically needs efficient ways to access and share knowledge, also to save precious knowledge being lost [1]. The reporting and sharing of NP occurrences in biological organisms are relevant to numerous scientific fields ranging from drug discovery to chemical ecology or chem...

Classical 1D 1H NMR spectra are prototypic for NMR spectroscopy in that they represent a wealth of chemical information encoded into convoluted graphs or patterns that contain complex features (aka multiplets), even for seemingly simple molecules. Accordingly, the utility of NMR depends on the theoretical and visual skills required to extract all t...

Classical 1D 1H NMR spectra are prototypic for NMR spectroscopy in that they represent a wealth of chemical information encoded into convoluted graphs or patterns that contain complex features (aka multiplets), even for seemingly simple molecules. Accordingly, the utility of NMR depends on the theoretical and visual skills required to extract all t...

Two new diprenylated coumaric acid isomers (1a and 1b) and two known congeners, capillartemisin A (2) and B (3), were isolated from Artemisia scoparia as bioactive markers using bioactivity-guided HPLC fractionation. Their structures were determined by spectroscopic means, including 1D and 2D NMR methods and LC-MS, with their purity assessed by 1D...

Curcuma longa (turmeric) has an extensive history of ethnomedical use for common ailments, and "curcumin"-containing dietary supplements (CDS) are a highly visible portion of today's self-medication market. Owing to raw material cost pressure, CDS products are affected by economically motivated, nefarious adulteration with synthetic curcumin ("sync...

Contemporary bioinformatic and chemoinformatic capabilities hold promise to reshape knowledge management, analysis and interpretation of data in natural products research. Currently, reliance on a disparate set of non-standardized, insular, and specialized databases presents a series of challenges to data access, either within the discipline or to...

Curcuma longa (turmeric) has a long ethnomedical background for common ailments, and Dietary Supplements (DS) labelled as “Curcumin” (CDS) are a highly visible portion of today’s selfmedication market. Due to cost pressure, these CDS products are affected by economically motivated adulteration with synthetic curcumin and are associated with unexpec...

Curcuma longa (turmeric) has a long ethnomedical background for common ailments, and Dietary Supplements (DS) labelled as “Curcumin” (CDS) are a highly visible portion of today’s selfmedication market. Due to cost pressure, these CDS products are affected by economically motivated adulteration with synthetic curcumin and are associated with unexpec...

In a continuing search for neuroprotective stilbenoids, two uncommon diastereomeric stilbenoid glucosides, africanoside A (1) and B (2) as well as fifteen known stilbenes, E-resveratrol, E-gnetifolin E, E-piceid, E-resveratroloside, E-gnetifolin K, E-gnetol, E-isorhapontigenin, E-isorhapontin, E-isorhapontigenin-4′-O-glucopyranoside, E-gnetin C, E-...

This Miniperspective of the published essential medicinal chemistry of cannabidiol (CBD) provides evidence that the popularization of CBD-fortified or CBD-labelled health products, and associated health claims, lack a rigorous scientific foundation. CBD's reputation as a cure-all puts it in the same class as other “natural” panaceas, where valid et...

Chlorophylls are present in all extracts from the aerial parts of green plant materials. Chlorophylls may act as in vitro bioassay nuisance compounds, possibly preventing the reproducibility and accurate measurement of readouts due to their UV/vis absorbance, fluorescence properties, and tendency to precipitate in aqueous media. Despite the diversi...

This study represents a systematic chemical and biological study of the rufomycin (RUF) class of cyclic heptapeptides, which our anti-TB drug discovery efforts have identified as potentially promising anti-TB agents that newly target the caseinolytic protein C1, ClpC1. Eight new RUF analogues, rufomycins NBZ1–NBZ8 (1–8), as well as five known pepti...

Mass spectrometry (MS) offers unrivalled sensitivity for the metabolite profiling of complex biological matrices encountered in natural products (NP) research. The massive and complex sets of spectral data generated by such platforms require computational approaches for their interpretation. Within such approaches, computational metabolite annotati...

Whereas generic, LC-based pharmaceutical control quality procedures depend largely on the detection mode and can be particularly ‘blind’ to certain impurities, NMR is a more versatile and, thus, often more judicious detector. While adulteration presents ever-evolving challenges for the analysis of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and finish...

Mass spectrometry (MS) offers unrivalled sensitivity for the metabolite profiling of complex biological matrices encountered in natural products (NP) research. The massive and complex sets of spectral data generated by such platforms require computational approaches for their interpretation. Within such approaches, computational metabolite annotati...

Ensuring identity, purity, and reproducibility are equally essential during synthetic chemistry, drug discovery, and for pharmaceutical product safety. Many peptidic APIs are large molecules that require considerable effort for integrity assurance. This study builds on quantum mechanical 1H iterative Full Spin Analysis (HiFSA) to establish NMR pept...

Correction for ‘The value of universally available raw NMR data for transparency, reproducibility, and integrity in natural product research’ by James B. McAlpine et al. , Nat. Prod. Rep. , 2018, DOI: 10.1039/c7np00064b.

Covering: up to 2018 With contributions from the global natural product (NP) research community, and continuing the Raw Data Initiative, this review collects a comprehensive demonstration of the immense scientific value of disseminating raw nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) data, independently of, and in parallel with, classical publishing outlets....

We wrote “The Essential Medicinal Chemistry of Curcumin” (TEMCC)(1) to raise awareness among medicinal chemists, natural product chemists, and other scientists to the challenges associated with working with a specific compound (curcumin; not identical with a plant or plant extract) that is an AIC (assay interference compound), a PAINS (pan-assay in...

Curcumin is a constituent (up to 6%) of the traditional medicine known as turmeric. Interest in the therapeutic use of turmeric and the relative ease of isolation of curcuminoids has led to their extensive investigation. Curcumin has recently been classified as both a PAINS (pan assay interference compounds) and an IMPS (invalid metabolic panaceas)...

Curcumin is a constituent (up to ∼5%) of the traditional medicine known as turmeric. Interest in the therapeutic use of turmeric and the relative ease of isolation of curcuminoids has led to their extensive investigation. Curcumin has recently been classified as both a PAINS (pan-assay interference compounds) and an IMPS (invalid metabolic panaceas...

Chemical standardization, along with morphological and DNA analysis ensures the authenticity and advances the integrity evaluation of botanical preparations. Achievement of a more comprehensive, metabolomic standardization requires simultaneous quantitation of multiple marker compounds. Employing quantitative (1)H NMR (qHNMR), this study determined...

Centrifugal Partition Chromatography (CPC) and all Countercurrent Separation apparatus provide chemists with efficient ways to work with complex matrices, especially in the domain of Natural Products. However, despite the great advances provided by these techniques, more efficient ways of analyzing the output flow would bring further enhancement. T...

The notion of data transparency is gaining a strong awareness among the scientific community. The availability of raw data is actually regarded as a fundamental way to advance science by promoting both integrity and reproducibility of research outcomes. Particularly, in the field of natural product and chemical research, NMR spectroscopy is a funda...

Composite-based, tooth colored dental restorations, in spite of their aesthetic appeal, are limited by a short life span. Every subsequent restoration results in the loss of healthy dental tissue. Thus, a bio-mimetic approach has been developed to enhance the mechanical strength of dentin using plant-derived proanthocyanidins (PACs). From a panel o...

NAPRALERT is a database on natural products, including data on the ethnobotany, chemistry, pharmacology, toxicology, and clinical trials. It was established in 1975 by the late Norman R. Farnsworth, at a time when computerized databases were just starting. It became web-accessible in 2005. Due to resource constraints, few enhancements were made to...

Dereplication represents a key step for rapidly identifying known secondary metabolites in complex biological matrices. In this context, Liquid-Chromatography coupled to High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (LC-HRMS) is increasingly used and, via untargeted data-dependent MS/MS experiments, massive amount of detailed information on the chemical compos...

The revision of the structure of the sesquiterpene aquatolide from a bicyclo[2.2.0]hexane to a bicyclo[2.1.1]hexane structure using compelling NMR data, X-ray crystallography, and the recent confirmation via full synthesis exemplify that the achievement of "structural correctness" depends on the completeness of the experimental evidence. Archived F...

The ability of certain oligomeric proanthocyanidins (OPACs) to enhance the biomechanical properties of dentin involves collagen cross-linking of the 1.3-4.5 nm wide space via protein-polyphenol interactions. A systematic interdisciplinary search for the bioactive principles of pine bark has yielded the trimeric PAC, ent-epicatechin-(4β→8)-epicatech...

C-glycosylated flavones, including orientin, isoorientin, vitexin, and isovitexin, are minor but biologically significant constituents of fruit extracts of the chaste-tree (Vitex agnus-castus L.), a botanical supplement used to treat PMS and postmenopausal symptoms. The partition coefficient, or K-value, is the ratio of the concentration of a compo...

A recent article by Baelli on the problems experienced by medicinal chemists with pan-assay interference compounds (PAINS) and Shoichet's workii on the impact of aggregation occurring in high throughput screening libraries, prompts a consideration of how these and other similar problems are experienced by pharmacognosists with promiscuous invalid m...

The acquisition of 1D 1H NMR (HNMR) spectra is one of earliest steps in characterizing natural products and other organic molecules. For publication, HNMR information usually is “converted” into a table format, and sometimes spectral plots are provided. However, this transformation is lossy and frequently insufficient for unambiguous dereplication....

1D NMR spectra contain a wealth of vital structural information that can enhance the description of bioactive molecules. The present study demonstrates how quantum-mechanics driven 1H iterative Full Spin Analysis (QM-HiFSA) is capable of distinguishing spectral detail that cannot be interpreted manually or visually, but provides important informati...

Proanthocyanidins (PACs) are secondary plant metabolites that mediate non-enzymatic collagen cross-linking and enhance the properties of collagen based tissue, such as dentin. The extent and nature of cross-linking is influenced by the composition and specific chemical structure of the bioactive compounds present in certain PAC-rich extracts. This...

Flavours extracted from oak wood during barrel ageing contribute to the organoleptic character of wines and spirits. The aim of this work was to identify the glycosidic precursors of the key volatile compounds responsible for oak wood aroma. Oak extract is a very complex matrix and, furthermore, precursors are present in very small quantities. Prep...

Grapevine canes are rich in resveratrol and its complex derivatives. These compounds have many biological activities and are needed mainly for health purposes. Canes, which are often wasted, can be used to produce these high-value compounds at low cost. We studied sixteen Vitis vinifera L. cultivars among the most widely cultivated ones worldwide....

Plants of the Carex genus (Family: Cyperaceae) have attracted recent attention as potential food additives due to their high levels of potential bioactive compounds. In this study, the stilbene contents of five unexplored Carex species were investigated: Carex capillacea, Carex hirta, Carex buchananii, Carex cuprina, Carex glauca. High-performance...

Microglia-driven inflammatory processes are thought to play an important role in ageing and several neurological disorders. Since consumption of a diet rich in polyphenols has been associated with anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects, we studied the effects of twenty-five stilbenoids isolated from Milicia excelsa, Morus alba, Gnetum africa...

Wine is a major dietary source of numerous potentially health promoting stilbenoids that have been the subject of many qualitative and quantitative studies. However, our initial HPLC-MS analyses of crude wine samples demonstrated the presence of compounds with molecular weights matching characteristic stilbenoid dimers, trimers, and tetramers that...

We present stilbenoid profiles of canes from sixteen grapevines. Fifteen stilbenoids were obtained through either isolation and structure identification using MS, NMR, and [α](D) or commercial standards. An HPLC-UV method for the simultaneous quantification of nine of these stilbenoids was developed and applied to canes of V. amurensis, V. arizonic...

The interaction between Vitis vinifera and trunk disease fungi requires better understanding. We studied the role of phenolics as possible plant defense compounds in this context. The impact of 24 grapevine phenolic compounds was determined on 6 major wood decay fungi by an in vitro agar plate assay. Hydroxystilbenoids, especially oligomers such as...