Narcissus and Daffodil

Galanthamine extraction 271
only a few steps. Expensive purification procedures such as chromatography could
be completely avoided, and the use of problematic reagents is very limited. This
method has been tested with 96 kg of bulbs of Narcissus ‘Carlton’, leading to a
further patent (Hille et al., 1996). Galanthamine can be obtained in even higher
purity than the drug currently available on the market.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to acknowledge the help and support of Prof. Dr. R. Matusch,
who served as mentor for this project. I would also like to thank F. van Elsäcker
for his help in harvesting and extracting the plant material, and Lohmann Therapie-
Systeme GmbH for financial support of the project.
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