Revista de farmacognosia y productos naturales

The problem of increase in antibiotic resistance is often linked with the slow pace at which new antibiotic compounds are discovered and developed. Among several other factors, the problem has been exacerbated by most pharmaceutical companies losing interest in new drug discovery and development process owing to insurmountable cost barriers of the drug research and development for novel antibiotic drugs. Most large pharmaceutical companies have abandoned natural product screening for drugs in favour of high throughput screening of chemical libraries consisting of laboratory parallel and massively synthesized small molecules, made by combinatorial chemistry approach, which have often culminated in failure. Recent advances in analytical chemistry, chemical synthetic methods, computational chemistry, computational biophysics, computational biology, genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics and microbiology, are making screening of natural products once more amenable to drug discovery. This review focuses on the advances and technologies currently available for discovery, design and development of novel antibiotic drugs for clinical practices, and the current status, progress and capacity building for exploration of the rich biodiversity in Africa. In addition, strategies involving public-private partnerships including sharing and pooling together of resources-biological, technical and financial, for screening of natural products, as well as technology transfer and expertise sharing across Africa are discussed.

Clerodendrum infortunatum Linn leaves of the Verbinaceae Family and contains biologically active substances. The aim of the current research was to determine best methods for extraction in different solvents and evaluation of different extraction methods for best of flavonoid compounds. Clerodendrum infortunatum Linn leaves was extracted with four different solvents. Extraction of the plant material with various organic solvents in increasing order of polarity with the help of Petroleum ether (60-80°), Chloroform, Acetone and Methanol solvents to the find out the percentage (%) yield of all the extracts. Thin layer chromatography study of each extract to know the number of components present in them. Extraction of flavonoid rich fraction with the help of (80%) ethanol (N.R Fransworth) by using different extraction methods then comparative study of percentage yield of total flavonoids like Maceration, Hot Continuous Percolation (Soxhlet Extraction), Microwave assisted Extraction and Ultrasonic Extraction (Extraction using Ultrasonic waves) and collect the fraction using column chromatography and Identification of isolated compound with the help of UV spectroscopy either Quercetin, Rutin or any other suitable flavonoid marker.

Objective: A New method was established for simultaneous estimation of Gallic acid and curcumin by RP-HPLC method.

Methods: Chromatographic separations were carried using Inspire (4.6 × 150 mm, 5 m) column with a mobile phase composition of 0.1% OPA buffer and Acetonitrile (30:70) have been delivered at a flow rate of 1 ml/min and the detection was carried out using waters HPLC auto sampler, separation module 2695 with PDA detector 2996 at wavelength 260 nm.

Results: The retention time for Gallic acid and curcumin were 2.119 and 2.730 minute respectively. The correlation coefficient values in linearity were found to be 0.999 and concentration range 500-2500 μg/ml for Gallic acid and 5-25 µg/ml for curcumin respectively. For accuracy the total recovery was found to be 100.58% and 100.54% for Gallic acid and curcumin. LOD and LOQ for gallic acid 3.05 and 10.07. LOD and LOQ for Curcumin 2.28 and 9.98.

Conclusion: The results of study showed that the proposed RP-HPLC method is a simple, accurate, precise, rugged, robust, fast and reproducible, which may be useful for the routine estimation of Gallic acid and curcumin in pharmaceutical dosage form.