The use of advanced "omics" tools in food science and nutrition allows investigating topics nowadays that were considered unapproachable few years ago, this trend has generated a new discipline defined for the first time by our group as "Foodomics" ("Alimentómica" in Spanish). Safety, quality and bioactivity of foods and food ingredients are investigated in Foodomics through the application and integration of advanced omics technologies, including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and/or metabolomics. The main goals of Foodomics are to improve consumers' well-being and knowledge. A global Foodomics study performed by our group demonstrated the antiproliferative activity of different extracts from rosemary against colon cancer cells. In the present work, we show a step forward in this long investigation in which a complete metabolomics study (combining results from LC-MS and CE-MS platforms) is carried out to corroborate the anti-proliferative effect of one of the main dietary polyphenols that was found in all the active rosemary extracts (i.e., carnosic acid). Moreover, the present work provides additional information on how this polyphenol from rosemary is able to modulate a specific metabolic pathway in the colon cancer cells (i.e., polyamines pathway), providing new evidences at molecular level on the antiproliferative effect of this type of compounds.

Trabajo presentado al XXII Congreso Italo-Latinoamericano de Etnomedicina celebrado en Puntarenas (Costa Rica) del 2 al 6 de septiembre de 2013.

Peer Reviewed