| A study published in 2023 in the Journal of Natural Products introduced a new approach, called interaction metabolomics, for identifying active synergists in natural product mixtures. The approach may be useful in research on natural products and in other areas of research that involve comprehensive mixture analysis. The study, which was jointly funded by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) and the Office of Dietary Supplements through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Consortium for Advancing Research on Botanical and Other Natural Products (CARBON) Program, was led by researchers from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The standard approach to identifying biologically active compounds in natural products involves a process called bioassay-guided fractionation. Some therapeutically important natural products, such as artemisinin and penicillin, were discovered through this process. But this approach focuses on isolating single biologically active compounds and does not account for the possibility of combined actions of multiple compounds within a mixture. | 