Separations of flavonoids and alkaloids in medicinal herbs by high-speed counter-current chromatography

Counter-current chromatography is a new liquid-liquid partition chromatography without using solid support. Recently, the technique has been remarkably improved in both partition efficiency and separation time. In this paper the capability of this high-speed counter-current chromatography was demonstrated on separation of two sets of samples obtained from medicinal herbs: a synthetic mixture of 3'-hydroxygenkwanin, luteolin and apigenin was separated on a two-phase solvent system composed of chloroform-methanol-water (4:3:2, v/v/v) and a crude ethanol extract from Anisodus tangulicus (Maxin) Pasch on chloroform-0.07 M sodium phosphate (pH 6.4) (1:1, v/v). In the light of chromatograms obtained from these samples, advantages of high-speed counter-current chromatography over other chromatographic methods were discussed in terms of partition efficiency, peak resolution, separation time, sample loading capacity, etc.