Lamiaceae phenols as multifaceted compounds: bioactivity, industrial prospects and role of “positive-stress”

There is a tremendous growing interest both in various industrial sectors and among people worldwide, towards the use of natural compounds from plant origin. The natural compounds obtained from plants have been more and more employed by cosmetic, food and pharmaceutical industries and could represent potential alternatives to synthetic chemicals. In the Lamiaceae family there are herbs with enormous socio-economic value, including several species of horticultural and ornamental interest, many used as culinary herbs, and with diversified industrial applications essentially due to their high content in valuable phenolic compounds. This review focuses on the wide spectrum of bioactive phenolic compounds in several species in the Lamiaceae, which possess known pharmacological properties and are used by humans for therapeutic purposes. It also reports other challenging and innovative industrial applications of these compounds as potential alternatives to conventional synthetic chemicals, because natural phenols would have lesser environmental and human health impacts than most of the conventional ingredients used in cosmetic, pesticides and food additives-preservatives industries. Finally, the review considers how an enhanced understanding of the effects of elicitation could be applied to increase and/or modify tissue content of active principles. Chemical or physical elicitors can activate the stress-signaling pathways leading to enhance the content of bioactive secondary metabolites, thus representing a new perspective for sustainable production of industrial crops.