Chapter 3 - Purification of herbal biomolecules

Abstract

Herbal plants were used for the prevention and treatment of human diseases for thousands of years. Besides, herbal plants also play an important role as a vital source for developing novel drugs due to their special treatment values against various ailments and novel modes of action. There are anxieties amongst patients about using synthetic drugs as therapeutic agents because of the reported undesirable effects on human health. Therefore a replacement of these synthetics drugs by herbal biomolecules has been proposed. Moreover, the most commonly used drugs available today were isolated from herbal products or were synthesized using herbal biomolecules as model molecules. Hence, herbal biomolecules’ purification plays a paramount role in identifying the potential lead molecules to be developed into a therapeutic agent. Moreover, the purification of biomolecules from herbal products should be conducted by bioassay-guided isolation techniques to ensure producing useful biomolecules as the end product. Numerous modern methods and approaches are available to purify herbal biomolecules by extract, isolate, and identify phytochemicals from a wide variety of herbal products. This chapter intends to provide a comprehensive view of various methods used to extract, isolate, and identify herbal biomolecules, namely ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, gas chromatography analysis, high-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry analysis, and so forth. The methods presented in this chapter are based on the herbal plant crude extract model, which is rich in various types of biomolecules.