Application of centrifugal partition chromatography in a general separation and dereplication procedure for plant extracts

Centrifugal Partition Chromatography (CPC) was used in a general separation and dereplication procedure in search for new biologically active compound s from crude plant extracts. In this procedure, the alcoholic extract was p refractionated by CPC with the solvent system heptane/ethyl acetate/methano l/water 6:1:6:1 (v/v/v/v) followed by bioactivity screening of the fraction s. The active fractions were analyzed for the known active components for d ereplication. if the activity was found in the most polar fraction, which t ended to contain a large group of compounds, the fraction was separated aga in by CPC (solvent system ethyl acetate/methanol/water 43:22:35, v/v/v). Th is two-step procedure was found to be efficient for five extracts tested fo r both chemical and bioactivity profiles.