Herbal medicines on the spot: back to the green essentials

Abstract

Plants have always been an attractive source of new molecular entities, many of whichhold potential for therapeutic purposes. From an analytical point of view, they pose achallenge since their compounds act in a synergistic way. Hence, powerful analyticaltechniques and data processing tools are put in place to unravel the green mystery. Theaim of this mini review is to revisit key topics in the field of herbal medicines, suchas main concepts of the trade, strategies to analyze complex mixtures, cutting-edgetechnologies and data processing tools to serve this purpose.