Extraction Of Natural Products: A New Driving Force For The Development Of The Biopharmaceutical Industry

The extraction of natural product components plays a very important role in the field of biopharmaceuticals.

Click to cistanche tubulosa extract

For example, Tu Youyou, the chief scientist of the Chinese Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, the winner of the "Medal of the Republic", and the first Chinese Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine, the new antimalarial drugs artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin created by her and her team saved the world. Especially the lives of millions of people in developing countries. Its key component, artemisinin, is a colorless needle-like crystal of sesquiterpene lactones with peroxy groups extracted from the stems and leaves of the compound inflorescence plant Artemisia annua.

Another example is Chuanxinlian Tablets, a cold medicine that is often encountered in daily life. The main component of Andrographis paniculata is a bitter-tasting heliotrope-type diterpene lactone compound isolated from the medicinal plant Andrographis paniculata.

Historically, natural products have played a key role in drug discovery, including cancer and infectious diseases, cardiovascular disease (e.g. statins), and multiple sclerosis (e.g. fingolimod), and have long been the mainstay of the fight against infectious diseases A major source of medicines, especially antibiotics.

Natural product extraction

The so-called natural product extraction mainly refers to the use of chemical engineering principles and methods to extract, separate and purify the chemical substances that makeup organisms.

Common Sources of Ingredients in Natural Medicines

In the research and development of innovative drugs based on natural products, the main sources of ingredients are biological secondary metabolites isolated from animals, plants, marine organisms, and microorganisms, as well as biologically endogenous physiologically active compounds.

Unique properties make it the source of modern medicine

Natural medicines generally have relatively low content in nature, complex structures, relatively difficult synthesis, and certain difficulties in mass production. However, they generally have structural diversity and complexity, highly selective and specific pharmacological activities, and novel mechanisms of action.

In modern medicine, the discovery of many effective agents or their precursors is derived from natural products.

For example, the above-mentioned antimalarial drugs artemisinin, andrographolide, and cinchona cream (also known as "quinine"), anticancer drugs paclitaxel, camptothecin, maytansine, anti-inflammatory drugs berberine, liver protection Drugs silymarin, Schisandra, antihypertensive drug reserpine, contraceptive drug trichosanthes, antibiotics penicillin and tetracycline obtained from microorganisms, etc.

Broad market development space

Natural medicine is the source of new drug research. The global natural medicine market is in a booming stage and has great growth potential. In a broad sense, natural medicine mainly refers to single or multiple components derived from animals, plants, and other organisms with clear therapeutic effects. Drugs and plant sources account for the majority. At present, no more than 10% of the 250,000 higher plants in the world have been developed, utilized, and studied, but more than 4,000 kinds of herbal medicines have been produced, with a total output value of tens of billions of dollars. It is estimated that by 2050, the most commonly used herbal medicines in the world will be There are 6,000 kinds of natural medicines, and there is a broad space for the development of natural medicines.

According to statistics, in the past 40 years, a total of 1,881 new drugs have been approved globally, of which about 23.5% are derived from natural products and their derivatives, including 71 natural products, accounting for 3.8%; 14 botanical drugs, accounting for 0.8%; There are 356 natural product derivatives, accounting for 18.9%.

Technological development creates new opportunities

However, drug discovery based on natural products still faces challenges, such as technical obstacles in screening, separation, characterization, and optimization, which also led to the gradual weakening of the pharmaceutical industry's enthusiasm for natural products since the 1990s. In recent years, with the continuous development of science and technology, including analytical tools, genome mining and engineering strategies, and advances in microbial culture, new opportunities have been created for the study of natural products in pharmaceuticals.

Classical natural product-based drug research begins with a screening of "crude" extracts to identify bioactive "hot" extracts, which are then further fractionated to isolate active natural product drugs. Bioactivity-guided separation is a laborious process with many limitations, but advanced analytical techniques can address some of these issues using a variety of strategies and techniques. 

For example, to create libraries compatible with high-throughput screening, crude oil extracts can be pre-fractionated into subfractions more suitable for automated liquid handling systems. In addition, fractionation methods can be adjusted so that subfractions preferentially contain compounds with drug-like properties (typically moderately hydrophilic). This approach increases the number of hits and enables more efficient tracking of promising hits compared to using crude extracts.

Therefore, natural product medicines remain an important resource for the discovery of scaffolds with high structural diversity and diverse bioactivity, which can be directly developed or serve as a starting point for the optimization of new drugs. While drug development, in general, continues to be challenged by high attrition rates, natural product drugs face additional hurdles due to issues such as availability, sustainable supply, and intellectual property constraints. However, advances in science and technology provide a solid foundation for natural product-based drug discovery to continue to make significant contributions to human health and longevity.