Everything about Semisynthesis totally explained
"
Semisynthesis" or
partial chemical synthesis is a type of
chemical synthesis that uses compounds isolated from
natural sources (for example
plant material or
bacterial or
cell cultures) as starting materials. These natural
biomolecules are usually large and complex
molecules. This is opposed to a
total synthesis where large molecules are synthesized from a stepwise combination of small and cheap (petrochemical) building blocks.
Semisynthesis is usually used when the
precursor molecule is too structurally complex, too costly or too inefficient to be produced by
total synthesis. It is also possible that the semisynthetic derivative outperforms the original biomolecule itself with respect to potency, stability or safety.
Drugs derived from natural sources are usually produced by harvesting the natural source or through semisynthetic methods: one example is the semisynthesis of
LSD from
ergotamine, which is isolated from
ergot fungus cultures. The commercial production of
Taxol is also based on semisynthesis (see:
Taxol total synthesis).
The antimalarial drug
artemether (a component of
Coartem) is a semisynthetic derived from naturally occurring
Artemisinin. The latter is unstable due to the presence of a
lactone group and therefore this group is replaced by an
acetal through
organic reduction with
potassium borohydride and
methoxylation :
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