Review, challenges, and prospects of the process of alkaloid extraction from plants

Abstract

Alkaloids are an important type of secondary metabolite in many organisms, exhibiting significant biological activity and pharmacological effects. In this review, we summarize the conventional procedure of alkaloid extraction, as well as the recent advances in the solvent-based and mechanic-based extraction methods, e.g., supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), deep eutectic solvents (DESs), microwave-assisted extraction (MAE), and ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE). We find that the advanced techniques are mostly at the laboratory scale while the conventional methods still dominate current alkaloid production. Hence, it is quite significant to investigate how to improve the classical alkaloid extraction processes. We expect that a data-driven scheme with the utilization of process analytical technology (PAT), process intensification (PI) and process data modeling is the most feasible for the community. However, implementation of novel techniques and PAT strategy to the industrial-scale production of alkaloids still faces significant technical and regulatory challenges, and hence developing typical paradigms is crucial in the foreseeable future.