oa Foreword by Raymond Brouillard

As a young PhD I remember my first conscious contact with the multi-coloured anthocyanins a polyphenol subclass. It was downtown Paris at the Jardin des Plantes, the former Jardin du Roy. Its gardeners used to grow a lot of ornamental plants possessing a rich variety of flower colours. The scenery was so superb that I came to the decision to try to understand how plants generate all these fantastic colours. It was my first step towards polyphenol research. There is little doubt that polyphenols are among the most popular molecules as far as the general public is concerned. Nowadays, these natural or synthetic substances are almost always seen as good for your health wherever they come from. Probably the best sources are to be found in vegetables, fruits as well as in other parts of plants including tubers, grains, flowers and roots. Since most of the developed countries population is located in large cities or urban areas, few people of such countries have access to gardening. Therefore, to consume the recommended amounts of food containing polyphenols, they rely on supermarkets for edible parts of fresh plants or on drugstores for more or less concentrated extracts of all kind of vegetables supposed to prevent from diseases going from heart attacks to cancers. The magic word associated with polyphenols is anti-oxidant although, under certain conditions, a few of them seem to act as pro-oxidant! Oxidation has been definitively classified in the bad category of biochemical reactions. But, we human beings need a lot of oxygen our whole life long. Together oxygen and water can produce lots of oxidizing species and where there is life there is water. Therefore reactive oxygen species can reach living targets wherever they are. So, polyphenols are welcome since, being rich in exchangeable hydrogen atoms, it is usually assumed that they provide protection against oxidation damages. Ageing, if not exactly identical to oxidation, is frequently reported as the worst that can happen to a living species. It is thus easily conceivable the astonishing number of anti-oxidant pills taken by human bodies. One should add that the caloric balance of polyphenols is good, nothing to compare with the hated, but so delicious, structurally simple sugars! The structural diversity of phenolic compounds is extremely large. It is therefore not so surprising that synthetic strategies have accumulated over the years to provide pure compounds in good quantities. Indeed, pure polyphenols are not easily extracted from plants, even if starting materials can often be obtained in huge amounts. One should think of tea leaves, cocoa beans and grapes, for instance. In this special issue of Current Organic Chemistry, as scientific editor, Stefan Chassaing has gathered a panel of scientists who develop the more recent synthetic views to target polyphenolics with promising medicinal and biological properties. Polyphenols interactions with proteins, anti-oxidant activity of plant phenols and anthocyanin copigmentation, in relation to wine ageing, are also reviewed. All the authors are masters in their fields and the special issue has its very place in every laboratory investigating chemical and biochemical subjects related to polyphenols.