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"Semisynthesis" or partial chemical synthesis is a type of chemical synthesis
Chemical synthesis

In chemistry, chemical synthesis is purposeful execution of chemical reactions in order to get a product , or several products. This happens by physics and chemical manipulations usually involving one or more reactions....
 that uses compounds isolated from natural sources (e.g. plant
Plant

Plants are Life organisms belonging to the Kingdom Plantae. They include familiar organisms such as trees, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae....
 material or bacteria
Bacteria

The Bacteria are a large group of unicellular microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals....
l or cell culture
Cell culture

Cell culture is the process by which prokaryote or eukaryote cells are grown under controlled conditions. In practice the term "cell culture" has come to refer to the culturing of cells derived from multicellular eukaryotes, especially animal cells....
s) as starting materials. These natural biomolecule
Biomolecule

A biomolecule is any organic chemistry molecule that is produced by a living organism, including large polymeric molecules such as proteins, polysaccharides, and nucleic acids as well as small molecules such as primary metabolites, secondary metabolites, and natural products....
s are usually large and complex molecule
Molecule

In chemistry, a molecule is defined as a sufficiently stable, electric charge neutral group of at least two atoms in a definite arrangement held together by very strong chemical bonds....
s. This is opposed to a total synthesis
Total synthesis

In principle a total synthesis is the complete chemical synthesis of complex Organic compound molecules from simpler pieces, usually without the aid of biological processes....
 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
Total synthesis

In principle a total synthesis is the complete chemical synthesis of complex Organic compound molecules from simpler pieces, usually without the aid of biological processes....
.






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"Semisynthesis" or partial chemical synthesis is a type of chemical synthesis
Chemical synthesis

In chemistry, chemical synthesis is purposeful execution of chemical reactions in order to get a product , or several products. This happens by physics and chemical manipulations usually involving one or more reactions....
 that uses compounds isolated from natural sources (e.g. plant
Plant

Plants are Life organisms belonging to the Kingdom Plantae. They include familiar organisms such as trees, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae....
 material or bacteria
Bacteria

The Bacteria are a large group of unicellular microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals....
l or cell culture
Cell culture

Cell culture is the process by which prokaryote or eukaryote cells are grown under controlled conditions. In practice the term "cell culture" has come to refer to the culturing of cells derived from multicellular eukaryotes, especially animal cells....
s) as starting materials. These natural biomolecule
Biomolecule

A biomolecule is any organic chemistry molecule that is produced by a living organism, including large polymeric molecules such as proteins, polysaccharides, and nucleic acids as well as small molecules such as primary metabolites, secondary metabolites, and natural products....
s are usually large and complex molecule
Molecule

In chemistry, a molecule is defined as a sufficiently stable, electric charge neutral group of at least two atoms in a definite arrangement held together by very strong chemical bonds....
s. This is opposed to a total synthesis
Total synthesis

In principle a total synthesis is the complete chemical synthesis of complex Organic compound molecules from simpler pieces, usually without the aid of biological processes....
 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
Total synthesis

In principle a total synthesis is the complete chemical synthesis of complex Organic compound molecules from simpler pieces, usually without the aid of biological processes....
. 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
LSD

Lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD, LSD-25, or acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family. Its unusual psychological effects, which include visuals of colored patterns behind the eyes in the mind, a sense of time distorting, and crawling geometric patterns, have made it one of the most widely known psyched...
 from ergotamine
Ergotamine

Ergotamine is an ergopeptine and part of the ergot family of alkaloids; it is structurally and biochemically closely related to ergoline. It possesses structural similarity to several neurotransmitters, and has biological activity as a vasoconstrictor....
, which is isolated from ergot
Ergot

Ergot refers to a group of fungus of the genus Claviceps . The most prominent member of this group is Claviceps purpurea. This fungus grows on rye and related plants, and can cause ergotism in humans and other mammals consuming seeds contaminated with the fruiting structure of this fungus, called an ergot sclerotium....
 fungus
Fungus

A fungus is a Eukaryote organism that is a member of the Kingdom Fungi . The fungi are a monophyletic group, also called the Eumycota , that is phylogeny distinct from the morphologically similar slime molds and water molds ....
 cultures. The commercial production of paclitaxel
Paclitaxel

Paclitaxel is a mitotic inhibitor used in cancer chemotherapy. It was discovered in a National Cancer Institute program at the Research Triangle Institute in 1967 when Monroe E....
 is also based on semisynthesis (see: paclitaxel total synthesis).

The antimalarial drug artemether
Artemether

Artemether is an antimalarial for the treatment of multi-drug resistant strains of Plasmodium falciparum malaria. It is combined with Lumefantrine and sold by Novartis under the brand names Riamet and Co-Artem....
 (a component of Coartem
Coartem

Coartem is the commercial name of artemether?lumefantrine, a drug combination effective in treating malaria, developed by the Ciba and Sandoz laboratories in 1996....
) is a semisynthetic derived from naturally occurring artemisinin
Artemisinin

Artemisinin is a medication used to treat multi-drug resistant strains of Plasmodium falciparum malaria. The compound is isolated from the plant Artemisia annua....
. The latter is unstable due to the presence of a lactone
Lactone

A lactone is a cyclic ester in organic chemistry . It is the condensation reaction product of an alcohol functional group and a carboxylic acid group in the same molecule....
 group and therefore this group is replaced by an acetal
Acetal

An acetal is a molecule with two single bonded oxygens attached to the same carbon atom.Traditional usages distinguish ketal from acetal . Current accepted terminology classifies ketals as a subset of acetals....
 through organic reduction with potassium borohydride and methoxylation
Methoxy

In chemistry , methoxy refers to the functional group consisting of a methyl group bound to oxygen. It has the formula:The word is used in organic nomenclature usually to describe an ether....
 :


See also

  • Drug discovery
    Drug discovery

    In medicine, biotechnology and pharmacology, drug discovery is the process by which medication are discovered and/or designed.In the past most drugs have been discovered either by identifying the active ingredient from traditional remedies or by serendipity discovery....
  • Drug development
    Drug development

    Drug development or preclinical development is defined in many pharmaceutical companies as the process of taking a new chemical lead through the stages necessary to allow it to be tested in human clinical trials, although a broader definition would encompass the entire process of drug discovery and clinical testing of novel drug candida...