Isolation and Purification of Bioactive Phytochemicals

Various forms of natural products such as plant extracts, pure phytochemicals and herbal formulations containing natural products offer tremendous opportunities for new drug discoveries and the credit goes to its chemical diversity. Since time immemorial medicinal plants in its various forms and have been used to treat chronic diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, cardiovascular diseases, etc. Recently along with the crude form of medicinal plants and their isolated active principles are also being used to cure several maladies. Isolation of bioactive constituents from the medicinal plants has always been a challenge because of the complexities involved in separation process, but the recent technological advancement in this field has facilitated the isolation process of chemical constituents from the plants. This book chapter offers a comprehensive review on the procedural techniques and application of classical column chromatography, prep-TLC, modern isolation and purification techniques such as flash chromatography, prep-HPLC, prep-GC, counter current chromatography, etc.

Keywords: Column Chromatography, Counter-Current Chromatography, Flash Chromatography, Isolation, Natural Products, Phytochemicals, Preparative-GC, Preparative-HPLC, Preparative-TLC, Purification.