Phytochemicals for High-Throughput Screening in Drug Discovery: Ever Thought of Sprouts?

This editorial argues that high‑throughput screening (HTS) remains central to biomedical research and modern drug discovery, strengthened by robotics, assay miniaturization, multiplexed detection, and AI‑driven computational screening. Despite the historic impact of natural products on approved medicines, natural‑product libraries—especially plant‑derived—are underused due to practical and regulatory barriers. We propose sprouts as a renewable, scalable, and standardized source of chemical diversity. By leveraging the OSMAC principle, sprout systems enable precise modulation of metabolic states to uncover cryptic metabolites and expand screening libraries. When paired with genomics, bioinformatics, and synthetic chemistry, sprout‑based libraries can complement existing HTS infrastructures, revive interest in nature‑derived scaffolds, and bridge agricultural sciences with biomedical discovery.