Crystalline three-dimensional membranes enable chromatography-free purification of natural products.

Crystalline three-dimensional membranes enable chromatography-free purification of Taxus crude extracts, sustaining 6-day organic solvent nanofiltration with ~96% paclitaxel retention and fourfold enrichment.

• Why it matters: Chromatographic purification of natural products is solvent- and energy-intensive, limiting sustainable pharmaceutical production and creating a bottleneck for drug purification.
• What they did: The authors used rigid crystalline membrane channels for continuous organic solvent nanofiltration of commercial Taxus crude extracts, including methanol molecular sieving, and scaled fabrication via nanosphere-assembled interfacial polymerization.
• The result: The membranes showed negligible swelling with stable solvent permeance, and life cycle assessment indicated nearly an order-of-magnitude reduction in carbon emissions versus liquid chromatography, enabling replacement of chromatographic steps.

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