Benefits and challenges of olive biophenols: a perspective

Abstract Thanks to the recent advancements in chemico-biological approaches, our understanding of olive secondary metabolites profile has significantly expanded. Analytical procedures provided an invaluable infrastructure to consider olive biophenols, in particular phenolic secoiridoids, as promising substances for improving daily lifestyle. In this chapter, we briefly reviewed the infrastructure and basic knowledge of polyphenols (PPs) biochemical profile, highlighted top signaling pathways that olive oil biophenols (OOBPs) may be involved, and discussed some challenges and limitation of PPs applications for clinical studies. Our literature searches suggested that four olive phenolic compounds—tyrosol, hydroxytyrosol, oleuropein, and oleocanthal—were the most studied OOBPs during the past decades. Indeed, gene/term ontology searches predicted that the above-mentioned compounds targeted inflammatory cascades to modulate either signaling pathways or genes expression profile. Further biochemical investigations should be performed to confirm the functionality of olive biophenols as effective supplements in the cornerstone of human diseases prevention.