Pharmacognosy is an interdisciplinary science with
the goal of researching potential drug substances
that occur in natural products such as plants

(See The Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy to learn more)

Plant samples are dried, ground up, and extracted
with appropriate solvents

Extracts are then tested against various biological
assays such as malaria, TB, cancer, and HIV

Extracts that show promising activity
are further separated using gravity
and vacuum chromatography, and TLC,
HPLC, GC, MS, and NMR methods to
isolate compounds and elucidate structures