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.
