Natural Products Isolation provides a comprehensive introduction to techniques for the extraction and purification of natural products from all biological sources. Geared to scientists with little experience of natural products extraction, but offering even skilled researchers valuable advice and insight, Natural Products Isolation lays the foundation for the potential extractor to isolate natural substances efficiently. Its methods and guidance will almost certainly play a major role in today's natural product discovery and development.

The term “natural products” spans an extremely large and diverse range of chemical compounds derived and isolated from biological sources. Our interest in natural products can be traced back thousands of years for their usefulness to humankind, and this continues to the present day. Compounds and extracts derived from the biosphere have found uses in medicine, agriculture, cosmetics, and food in ancient and modern societies around the world. Therefore, the ability to access natural products, understand their usefulness, and derive applications has been a major driving force in the field of natural product research. The first edition of Natural Products Isolation provided readers for the first time with some practical guidance in the process of extraction and isolation of natural products and was the result of Richard Cannell’s unique vision and tireless efforts. Unfortunately, Richard Cannell died in 1999 soon after completing the first edition. We are indebted to him and hope this new edition pays adequate tribute to his excellent work. The first edition laid down the “ground rules” and established the techniques available at the time. Since its publication in 1998, there have been significant developments in some areas in natural product isolation. To capture these developments, publication of a second edition is long overdue, and we believe it brings the work up to date while still covering many basic techniques known to save time and effort, and capable of results equivalent to those from more recent and expensive techniques.

This new book encompasses, in great detail, the most recent progress made in the isolation and separation of natural products. It covers antibiotics, marine and plant-derived substances, enzyme inhibitors and interferons. The most recent separation methodology is described. Although there is a bias toward antibiotics, it was done because this is still the largest natural products area of research.The fourteen chapters are written by experts in their respective fields. The first two chapters are largely devoted to new methodology applied to purification of a variety of compounds. They include an extensive review and new applications of counter-current chromatography and the newly emerging HPLC-photodiode array technology. Chapter 3 provides a review of affinity chromatography applied to the separation of antibiotics for the first time. Next are chapters on antimicrobials with an update on all the most recent &bgr;-lactam (after 1976) discoveries. A comprehensive review of a very important class of antiparasitic agents - the avermectins - follows. An update of isolation and purification of a variety of marine-derived compounds is next. The succeeding chapter is a comprehensive review of the most recent developments in isolation and purification of interferons. This is followed by a discussion of enzyme inhibitors and their isolation and purification and ties in with a chapter on plant-derived natural products, some of which are also in this same category. The final chapter is a futuristic essay indicating the isolation of minute amounts of natural products and the fascinating biological properties which they possess.The book has extensive isolation schemes, tables, figures and chemical structures. In many instances a short summary of the producing organism, brief chemical description and structure and biological activity of the compounds is presented. Detailed information of extraction, separation and purification techniques follow. Each chapter has an extensive bibliography and, where applicable, an appendix showing sources of materials and equipment. A detailed index to the subject matter is included at the end of the book.The book thus offers the reader: up-to-date reviews (including 1988) of specific topics in the natural products field not to be found elsewhere; information on new chromatographic methods and techniques described in sufficient detail to be utilized by investigators in this area of research; and extensive references to enable the serious researcher to pursue particular information. It will appeal to pharmaceutical and natural products researchers and is a valuable acquisition for university chemistry and biochemistry departments.

Over the years, applications of various non-conventional solvents diversified in various fields such as organic synthesis, natural products, drug design, pharmaceuticals, dyes and agrochemical industries. This book consists of nine chapters, which present recent advances and applications of various non-conventional solvents in organic transformations, drug design and bioremediation. Environmental impacts of non-conventional solvents and comparison between traditional solvents and non-conventional solvents are also discussed in this book.

Following the successful format of the original, this new edition presents applications of the most recent techniques for the detection, isolation, and structural determination of bioactive natural products. It features new case studies and illustrations that demonstrate applications of techniques covered in the book. Complementing as much as replacing the first edition, most of the contributors are new. The text includes updates on chemical extraction, and NMR-based structure determination, and new contributions on liquid chromatography linked with mass and NMR spectroscopy, dereplication approaches, assessment of source material for natural products and novel bioassay development.

A fresh examination of the past successes of natural products as medicines and their new future from both conventional and new technologies. High-performance liquid chromatography profiling, combinatorial synthesis, genomics, proteomics, DNA shuffling, bioinformatics, and genetic manipulation all now make it possible to rapidly evaluate the activities of extracts as well as purified components derived from microbes, plants, and marine organisms. The authors apply these methods to new natural product drug discoveries, to microbial diversity, to specific groups of products (Chinese herbal drugs, antitumor drugs from microbes and plants, terpenoids, and arsenic compounds), and to specific sources (the sea, rainforest, and endophytes). These new opportunities show how research and development trends in the pharmaceutical industry can advance to include both synthetic compounds and natural products, and how this paradigm shift can be more productive and efficacious.

Natural products present in the plant and animal kingdom offer a huge diversity of chemical structures which are the result of biosynthetic processes that have been modulated over the millennia through genetic effects. With the rapid developments in spectroscopic techniques and accompanying advances in high-throughput screening techniques, it has become possible to isolate, and then determine the structures and biological activity of natural products rapidly, thus opening up exciting new opportunities in the field of new drug development to the pharmaceutical industry. The series also covers the synthesis or testing and recording of the medicinal properties of natural products. "There is a good mix of chemistry, structure elucidation, synthesis, and biology in the various chapters, thereby appealing to a diverse readership. The diagrams are clear and the writing excellent. In summary, this is another excellent volume in a very valuable series on natural products for which Professor Atta-ur-Rahman is to be congratulated...... an important and essential asset for those libraries supporting the efforts of natural product research groups." Geoffrey A. Cordell, University of Illinois, Chicago, USA, PHYTOCHEMISTRY, Vol.65, 2004 - Describes the chemistry of bioactive natural products - Contains contributions by leading authorities in the field - A valuable source for researchers and engineers working in natural product and medicinal chemistry

Historically, natural products have great relevance for the development of new drugs. Natural molecules, in addition to directly providing new compounds with different therapeutic functions have provided scaffolds and a great diversity of structures that serve as inspiration for the design and discovery of new drugs. The great structural complexity and the significant number of natural compounds that can be obtained and their advantages also present some historical problems that need to be overcome. Issues such as difficulty in isolation, difficulty in synthesizing compounds found in nature in the laboratory, screening to evaluate the biological properties of these compounds, and structural optimization to enhance the pharmacological properties of biomolecules; are some of the main difficulties encountered in research with natural products and in the design/discovery of new medicines. Therefore, this book addresses the great scientific advances that provide practical solutions to using natural products to develop new drugs. We address topics related to the genesis of research projects that use natural products to design new drugs. We address the discovery of new species, initial processes for identification and extraction of compounds, isolation and identification of these structures, techniques, and advances in vitro and in vivo methods that support the discovery of new natural drugs, synthesis of new compounds from natural molecules, in silico optimization processes of potentially promising compounds.

This volume describes several highly diverse subjects: Chapter 1 explores marine biodiscovery of the North-eastern Atlantic off the coast of Ireland as a model for best practice in research. The second chapter investigates Brazilian Chemical Ecology and examples of insect-plant communication studies that are mediated by natural products demonstrate the beautiful interconnectedness of species in a biome. Our third chapter comprises the advances in the science of the sesquiterpene quinone, perezone, which in 1852 was the first natural product isolated in crystalline form in the New World. The last two chapters are from a Vietnamese group and the first of these follows the phytochemistry, pharmacology, and ethnomedical uses of the genus Xanthium, which produces interesting sulfur and nitrogen containing natural products. Finally, the genus Desmos is discussed, where an overview of its constituent natural products and their in vitro pharmacological potential is described.

This book is the first of its kind in bringing together biodiversity, chemical ecology, phytochemistry and cancer therapy. The highlight of the book is an exhaustive compilation of scientific data on biodiversity of medicinal plants, biodiversity and metagenomics, chemical ecology of medicinal plants, chemical ecology of marine organisms, natural products from terrestrial microbial organisms with activity towards cancer cells, marine organisms, ethnopharmacology and phytotherapy, contribution of African flora in world fight against cancer, natural products derived from terrestrial plants with activity towards cancer cells and established anticancer drugs from natural origin.The book discusses the state-of-the-art of each topic to serve as reference resource tools for graduate students as well as scientists and scholars in pharmaceutical sciences, pharmacology, organic chemistry and biochemistry, pharmacognosy, phytochemistry, ethnomedicine and ethnopharmacology, complementary and alternative medicine, medical and public health sciences and others. It includes cutting-edge developments in anticancer discovery from both medicinal plants and organisms.