Fine Chemicals from Agricultural Residues

Flavonoids and proanthocyanidins are potent anti-oxidants and have recently found considerable interest in their potential for reducing risks or treatments of heart disease, cancer, and microbial infections. To make further progress in understanding the biological significance of these compounds, it is necessary to provide biologists with gram to kilogram amounts of pure compounds at a reasonable price. It is also necessary to be able to assure the potential to produce tonnage quantities should drug discovery and development be successful. Because oligomeric proanthocyanidins are usually found in only low concentrations even in plant tissues containing high concentrations of tannins, production of these compounds in gram quantities by direct extraction is usually not feasible. Therefore, this research is directed to optimizing ways to use abundant agricultural waste products as a source of flavan-3-ol derivatives that can be used as intermediates in the "semi-syntheses" of a wide variety of plant proanthocyanidin derivatives. Successful development of processes to produce these flavan-3-ol derivatives will open the door to production of a wide variety of proanthocyanidin derivatives and allow us to optimize the biological properties of these compounds.