The process of isolating a natural product from its source can be costly in terms of committed time and material expense, and it may challenge the availability of the relied upon natural resource (or have ecological consequences for the resource). For instance, it has been estimated that the bark of an entire yew tree (Taxus brevifolia) would have to be harvested to extract enough paclitaxel for just a single dose of therapy. Furthermore, the number of structural analogues obtainable for structure–activity analysis (SAR) simply via harvest (if more than one structural analogue is even present) is limited by the biology at work in the organism, and so outside of the experimentalist's control.
In such cases where the ultimate target is harder to come by, or limits SAR, it is sometimes possible to source a middle-to-late stage biosynthetic precursor or analogue from which the ultimate target can be prepared. This is termed semisynthesis or partial synthesis. With this approach, the related biosynthetic intermediate is harvested and then converted to the final product by conventional procedures of chemical synthesis.
This strategy can have two advantages. Firstly, the intermediate may be more easily extracted, and in higher yield, than the ultimate desired product. An example of this is paclitaxel, which can be manufactured by extracting 10-deacetylbaccatin III from T. brevifolia needles, then carrying out a four-step synthesis. Secondly, the route designed between semisynthetic starting material and ultimate product may permit analogues of the final product to be synthesized. The newer generation semisynthetic penicillins are an illustration of the benefit of this approach.