ISOLATION AND IDENTIFICATION OF BIOACTIVE COMPOUNDS FROM PLANT BASED TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE

Abstract

Plants used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which have been cultivated and expanded for thousands of years, provide a rich source for screening bioactive compounds with modern assays. These plants have traditionally been proven to provide some activity in the treatment of human disease and with modern isolation techniques and manipulation of the plant metabolome, the bioactive compounds can be isolated and provide new leads in drug discovery. The project described in this work details the bioassay guiding fractionation of two plants, Scutellaria baicalensis and Cyclocarya paliurus. In addition to the bioassay guided fractionation, optimization into the isolation of the respective bioactive compounds for each plant was made in order to improve efficiency. Finally, in order to look at the expression profile of the polar fractions compared to the undesirable lipophilic fractions that occur in excess with normal plant based extracts, preliminary work was completed with cell culture studies in the plant Cichorium intybus.