Phytopharmacy & Phytomedicine — Phase 3

Phytochemical Screening & Characterization

The third phase of phytopharmaceutical research establishes what an authenticated plant extract actually contains, moving from a qualitative survey of its secondary metabolite classes through to structural characterisation of the compounds responsible for its biological activity. This phase covers preliminary phytochemical screening, the classification and biosynthetic origin of the secondary metabolites being investigated, and the chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques used to separate, detect, and elucidate the structure of marker compounds, concluding with instrumental approaches to dereplication and bioassay-guided fractionation.