New trends in extraction and separation processes

The market of botanical derivatives in industrialized countries is in constant increase with different market positioning, of the various compounds used today, country by country. In the past the most significant efforts, at the discovery level, have been focused on pharmaceutical molecules, isolating pure compounds from the botanical source and then following the approaches of medicinal chemistry and international regulations for drugs.

Many molecules of strategic importance for several pathologies have been identified and are still drugs of indisputable clinical value. The most recent examples are the anticancer products, paclitaxel, camptothecin and their second or third generation's derivatives. The realization of the pharmaceutical molecules in technological terms changed drastically over the years, passing from the harvest of botanical biomasses from the wild, to their cultivation according to the GAP and finally to the purity of the API, from a reasonable percentage to the highest value obtainable using the most sophisticated analytical technologies. In the last twenty years along with the pharmaceutical products, two classes of botanicals namely nutraceutical or food supplements and the so called novel foods have been introduced on the market. These categories of natural derivatives represent the real expansion of botanicals in the world due to the fact that the concept of disease prevention entered into the education of the people and the doctors. With the experience of drug development, these new segments are today consistently oriented to the amelioration of the quality of the life. Considering that the number of healthy people is higher then that of the patients, the volumes of the botanicals are huge; the equipment for extraction and purification must be adapted to the new exigencies and this matter will be discussed long with the regulatory requirements.