www.mnf-journal.com Page 1 Molecular Nutrition & Food Research Received: 15-Oct-2017; Revised: 23-Jan-2018; Accepted: 24-Jan-2018 This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi: 10.1002/mnfr.201700860. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Constituents of Mediterranean spices counteracting vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation: identification and characterization of rosmarinic acid methyl ester as a novel inhibitor Rongxia Liu 1,†,* , Elke H. Heiss 2,† , Birgit Waltenberger 3,† , Tina Blažević 2 , Daniel Schachner 2 , Baohong Jiang 4 , Vladimir Krystof 5 , Wanhui Liu 1 , Stefan Schwaiger 3 , Luis M. Peña-Rodríguez 6 , Johannes M. Breuss 7 , Hermann Stuppner 3 , Verena M. Dirsch 2 , and Atanas G. Atanasov 2,8,* 1 School of Pharmacy, Key Laboratory of Molecular Pharmacology and Drug Evaluation, Ministry of Education, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Drug Delivery System and Biotech Drugs in Universities of Shandong, University of Yantai, Yantai, China. 2 Department of Pharmacognosy, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria. 3 Institute of Pharmacy/Pharmacognosy and Center for Molecular Biosciences Innsbruck (CMBI), University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria. 4 State Key Laboratory of Drug Research, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China. 5 Laboratory of Growth Regulators, Palacky University & Institute of Experimental Botany AS CR, Olomouc, Czech Republic 6 Unidad de Biotecnología, Centro de investigación Científica de Yucatán, Mérida, Yucatán, México 7 Center for Physiology and Pharmacology, Institute for Vascular Biology and Thrombosis Research, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.