Treasure from garden: chemical profiling, pharmacology and biotechnology of mulleins Kalina I. Alipieva • Ilkay Erdogan Orhan • I. Irem Tatli Cankaya • Emanuela P. Kostadinova • Milen I. Georgiev Received: 15 January 2014 / Accepted: 17 April 2014 / Published online: 26 April 2014 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 Abstract The genus Verbascum (mulleins), belong- ing to the family Scrophulariaceae, comprises about 360 species of flowering plants. The leaves, flowers and whole aerial parts of Verbascum spp. have been widely used in traditional medicine for the treatment of respiratory and inflammatory disorders and also display powerful wound healing activity. Verbascum species are found to accumulate several groups of bioactive molecules, therefore they might be utilized as attractive sources of new (drug) leads. The present review attempts to provide an up-to-date comprehen- sive overview on phytochemical and pharmacological aspects of Verbacum spp. research along with some successful examples of growing (and transforming) mulleins in vitro. Keywords Verbascum Á Iridoids Á Phenylethanoids Á Metabolomics Á Anti-inflammatory Á Hairy roots Introduction Verbascum species, commonly known as ‘‘mulleins’’ (also named ‘‘koroviaks’’ in Russia and ‘‘sig ˘irk- uyrug ˘u’’ in Anatolia), are well-known herbs with long-standing use in the folk medicine. Various applications of leaves, flowers and roots of Verbascum spp. for treatment of respiratory disorders, eczema, rheumatism, wounds and anal fistula in traditional Turkish medicine have been thoroughly descrbied (Baytop 1999; Tatli and Akdemir 2006). Moreover, mulleins are used in the European folk medicine as antiseptic, astringent and expectorant agents, and frequently applied in the treatment of inflammations, migraine, asthma and spasmodic coughs (Grieve 1995). Although mulleins have been used as remedy since ancient times, their popularity increased com- mercially in the past few years. Nowadays, the dried leaves and flowers, swallow capsules, alcoholic extracts and the flower oil of common mullein (Verbascum thapsus L.) can be found in the USA health stores (Turker and Gurel 2005). According to the assesment report of European Medicines Agency (EMEA; www.ema.europa.eu), written in 2008 on V. thapsus, V. densiflorum and V. phlomoides flos with K. I. Alipieva (&) Á E. P. Kostadinova Institute of Organic Chemistry with Centre of Phytochemistry, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Acad. Georgi Bonchev Str., bl.9, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria e-mail: alipieva@orgchm.bas.bg I. E. Orhan Department of Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Gazi University, 06330 Ankara, Turkey I. I. T. Cankaya Department of Pharmaceutical Botany, Faculty of Pharmacy, Hacettepe University, 06100 Ankara, Turkey M. I. Georgiev The Stephan Angeloff Institute of Microbiology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Plovdiv, Bulgaria 123 Phytochem Rev (2014) 13:417–444 DOI 10.1007/s11101-014-9361-5