Preparative Separation and Purification of Three Flavonoids from the Anti-Inflammatory Effective Fraction Ofsmilax Chinal. by High-Speed Counter-Current Chromatography

Flavonoids are the main chemical constituents of Smilax china L. and thought to be responsible for the anti-inflammatory activity of Smilax china L. In this study, a suitable HSCCC method was developed to separate the three main flavonoids in a one-separation from the anti-chronic pelvic inflammation disease (CPID) effective fraction of Smilax china L. with a two-phase solvent system composed of n-hexane-ethyl acetate-methanol-water (1:10:1:10, v/v/v/v). 42 milligrams of astilbin, 10 mg neoisoastilbin, and 6 mg quercetin-3-O-α-L-rhamnoside were separated from 200 mg of the anti-CPID effective fraction of Smilax china L. with purity of 98.3%, 98.7%, 98.5%, respectively, by HPLC analysis. Orthogonal test L9 (34) was also applied to investigate the optimum extracting conditions of the three flavonoids. HSCCC was successfully used for the isolation and purification of the three flavonoids from the anti-CPID effective fraction of Smilax china L. and the neoisoastilbin was first separated from Smilax china L.