Medicinal plants are a good source of novel therapeutic drugs, due to the phytochemicals present.
Artemia, commonly known as brine shrimp, is a tiny halophilic invertebrate belonging to class Crustacean, which
plays an important role in saline aquatic and marine eco-systems. Besides its usage in aquaculture, it is also
highly valued for its application in toxicity detection and it is used in areas such as Ecology, Physiology, Ecotoxicology,
Aquaculture and Genetics. Furthermore, Artemia based lethality assay (brine shrimp lethality assay,
BSLA) is rapid, convenient and low cost. Presently, brine shrimp lethality assays are enormously employed in
research and applied toxicology. It has been used in the study of natural products as a preliminary toxicity assay
to screen a large number of extracts and compounds for drug discovery in medicinal plants. The aim of this review
paper is to collect, organize, select and discuss the existing knowledge about the different uses of Artemia
salina as a bench-top bioassay for the discovery and purification of bioactive natural products.