Identification and Quantification Methodologies for Active Substances in Natural Products: The Hole of Chromatographic and Spectroscopic Techniques

The search for new pharmacologically active compounds, whose source can be the natural products, influences the development of techniques with higher separation efficient and identification capacity. From these techniques, chromatography is the most useful and versatile one, since it may aggregate separation, isolation and identification, depending on the detection system used. For identification and structural characterization, the spectroscopic methods as nuclear magnetic resonance, mass spectrometry and infrared spectrometry are essential in the research of biologically active natural products. Nowadays, several modern chromatographic techniques, automated and hyphenated with spectroscopic and spectrometric methods, are disposable to be used on investigation of natural products from different matrixes, whose components can be investigated in a rapid, sensitive and reliable determination. This review is focused on the brief discussion and application about the chromatographic and spectroscopic methods that are currently available for analysis of compounds from natural sources.