The Importance of Extraction, Purification and Spectroscopic Analysis Techniques in the Discovery of Bioactive Natural Products

Since ancient times, natural resources like plants, bacteria, fungi, and marine organisms have been utilized to develop new drugs. Natural products continue to be compounds of interest today as drug candidates due to their functional group diversity, molecular asymmetry and complex structure. However, the concentration of pharmacologically active substances found in natural sources are relatively low. Furthermore, the time-intensive extraction and purification process also limits the discovery of drugs from natural resources. Therefore, the development of selective and efficient experimental procedures for the extraction and isolation of bioactive metabolites still remains essential. This review aims to comprehensively summarize both conventional and modern extraction methods used to obtain biologically active natural products, various chromatography techniques applied in their purification and isolation, and the spectroscopic techniques necessary for elucidating their chemical structures.