Solubilization of the lichen metabolite (+)-usnic acid for testing in tissue culture.

The pharmacological testing of natural products can often be hampered by the poor solubility of such compounds in non-toxic solvents. There is thus a need for a suitable agent for solubilization of natural substances to allow testing on a variety of cell lines in-vitro. Such an agent should ideally have no direct effects on any of the commonly used cell lines from a variety of tissues and mammalian species to allow proper comparison.