Resveratrol is a stilbenoid, a type of natural phenol, and a phytoalexin produced naturally by several plants in response to injury or when the plant is under attack by pathogens such as bacteria or fungi. The first mention of resveratrol was in a Japanese article in 1939 by Michio Takaoka, who isolated it from the poisonous, but medicinal plant, Veratrum album. The name presumably comes from the fact that it is a resorcinol derivative coming from a Veratrum species. In 2003, D.
Sinclair from Harvard Medical School reported in Nature that resveratrol activated sirtuins in yeast cells. This was immediately followed by the launch of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals. While pharmacological effects of resveratrol did not turn out to be commercially viable, their discovery lead to efforts to develop other types of SIRT genes' activators. Although slated to be the molecule responsible for the…
