Quality Control of Psoralea corylifolia L. Based on High-Speed Countercurrent Chromatographic Fingerprinting.

Xiaoxue Wu,Qing Chen,Xuemin Gao,Huayu Yang,Xinmei Liu,Xuan Zhu,Hua Song,Shuyi Zhang,Funan Li

doi:10.3390/molecules25020279

Abstract

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)has played an important role in promoting the health of Chinese people. The TCM Psoralea corylifolia L. has been used in the treatment of various kinds of diseases including enuresis, vitiligo, and calvities. However, therapeutic effects of P. corylifolia L. have often influenced by the quality of plants. So, it is very important to control the quality of P. corylifolia L. In this study, analytical high-speed countercurrent chromatography (HSCCC) was successfully used to fingerprint P. corylifolia L. Samples of P. corylifolia L. were extracted by ultrasonic extraction. n-hexane-ethyl acetate–methanol–water at a ratio of 5:5.5:6.5:5 (v/v) was selected as a two-phase solvent system and the condition of HSCCC were optimized in order to good separation. And the method of HSCCC was verified (reproducibility, precision, and stability). HSCCC chromatograms exhibited six common peaks, which were selected as indicator compounds for the quality control of P. corylifolia L. Within 20 types of medicinal materials, chemical components are similar, but the levels of components are quite different in HSCCC fingerprint. The present results demonstrate that the HSCCC method provides a reliable basis for the quality control of P. corylifolia L. and can also be applied to confirm the authenticity of plant materials.

Highlights

The dry fruits of leguminous plant Psoralea corylifolia L. (Buguzhi in Chinese) are one of the most popularly used plant materials in Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)
Our results indicate that high-speed countercurrent chromatography (HSCCC) is an inexpensive, reliable, cost-effective, and feasible way to fingerprint products used in TCM and represents a new technology that may be used to control the quality of products used in TCM
The HSCCC analysis method can be widely used to perform quality control analyses of products used in TCM; since it is capable of separating components of mixtures at high levels of resolution, cost to perform procedures is low and no strict method required to pretreat of samples

Summary

Introduction

The dry fruits of leguminous plant Psoralea corylifolia L. (Buguzhi in Chinese) are one of the most popularly used plant materials in TCM. The dry fruits of leguminous plant Psoralea corylifolia L. P. corylifolia L. has been used for the treatment of various diseases including enuresis, vitiligo, pollakiuria, asthma, cough, nephritis, and calvities [1]. It exhibits many biological activities including anticancer [2], anti-aging [3], anti-osteoporosis [4], and other activities [5,6]. The active components of P. corylifolia L. are coumarins [7], such as psoralen and isopsoralen (Figure 1). Pharmacological tests have revealed that psoralen and isopsoralen have antioxidant [8], antitumor [2], and antibacterial [9] activities.

Results

Discussion

Conclusion