Selectively preparative purification of aristolochic acids and aristololactams from Aristolochia plants

A novel method has been developed for the purification of aristolochic acids and aristololactams compounds from Aristolochia plants, a kind of typically toxic traditional Chinese medicine. In this method, Oligo (ethylene glycol) separation column which has “clustering function” for compounds in TCMs was used to produce the fractions containing the compounds with similar structures. A four-channel parallel preparative HPLC with C18 separation column was employed to purify the target compounds. The extraction sample of the blending of Radix Aristolochiae, Fructus Aristolochiae and Caulis Aristolochiae Manshuriensis was used to develop the method. Then, four aristolochic acids and three aristololactams were obtained using this method and the chemical identification was confirmed by Q-TOF-MS, ¹H NMR and ¹³C NMR. Thus, this method can deal with more than one traditional Chinese medicine simultaneously. Additionally, the results demonstrated that this method was an effective way to purify target compounds selectively from TCMs.