Recent Trends in Natural Antioxidants: A Decade of Progress in Phenols, Flavonoids and Artemisinin Research (2015–2025)

The past decade (2015–2025) has seen natural antioxidant research, particularly on artemisinin, phenolic acids, and flavonoids, progress from simple free radical scavenging assays to sophisticated molecular pathway studies, nanotechnology-based delivery, and early-stage clinical trials. These phytochemicals derived from plant genera of diverse origin show multifaceted biological activities such as redox regulation, anti-inflammatory, and chemopreventive effects through major regulatory pathways such as Nrf2/Keap1, NF-κB, and MAPKs. Artemisinin, besides its established antimalarial activity, also emerges as a potent oxidative stress modulator by covalent modification of KEAP1 cysteine residues, activation of NRF2, and induction of cytoprotective genes. Phenolic acids and flavonoids introduce supplementary antioxidant and therapeutic options with evidence for synergistic interactions. Whatever bioavailability and stability problems may exist aside, advances in plant biotechnology, metabolic engineering, and nanoformulations have enhanced yield, potency, and delivery. This review synopsizes a decade of biochemical, pharmacological, and translational advances, highlights gaps in clinical validation, and indicates avenues for the future involving omics technologies and AI-aided metabolic modeling to enable the rational design of next-generation antioxidant therapies