Chapter 2 - Recent advances in extraction of natural compounds

Abstract

Natural products are significant for various applications such as cosmetics, drug development, nutraceuticals, perfumery, etc. The major problem with natural products is their natural abundance, which is very low, thus hampering further research to evaluate their detailed biological properties. The hyphenation in sophisticated analytical instrumentation such as liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) or liquid chromatography-nuclear magnetic resonance (LC-NMR) spectroscopy which comprises online structural characterization proved to be impressive in the identification of natural products from the biomass without prior isolation. Nevertheless, there are several cases wherein the prior isolation of natural products is necessary for the evaluation of biological activities and stereochemistry assignment. Furthermore, the widely used bioassay-guided isolation of natural products and their correlation with in vitro bioassays measured on a microscale have shortened the duration of target detection considerably. Nowadays, the primary focus is toward the development of such integrated and sustainable technologies that aim toward the extractions and purification of wide range chemicals from the most diverse origin. This chapter highlights the importance of various extraction and isolation techniques used in natural product chemistry along with their evolution over the period. Moreover, we have incorporated a few case studies employing the utility of modern extraction techniques for the extraction and isolation of bioactive natural products from the natural biomass.