Plants-Derived Natural Products and Drug Discovery

Over the last decade, there has been a renewing interest in natural products research. The exceptional developments in the areas of separation science, spectroscopic techniques associated with microplate-based ultrasensitive in vitro assays provide a novel and interesting drug design from natural products. The various available chromatographic techniques have made possible the preisolation analyses of crude extracts or fractions from different natural sources. This chapter presents a general overview of the processes involved in natural product research, starting from extraction to determination of the structures of purified products.

Keywords: Natural products, extraction, identification, in vitro, drug, phytochemical, separation, isolation, analysis, molecules.