Abstract

Soyasapogenols derived from soyasaponins, which abundantly occur in soy hypocotyls, are of great importance as bioactive compounds due to their physiological activities. However, there is a lack of a high-efficiency and scalable preparation and isolation procedure. This work extends research on applying and comparing high-speed countercurrent chromatography (HSCCC) and preparative high-performance liquid chromatography (prep-HPLC) either singly and/or combinedly in preparative isolation of soyasapogenol A and B. The comparison reveals that the yield of 0.24 and 0.21% of soyasapogenol A and B with the purity of 98.09 and 98.90%, respectively, were obtained from the starting material of soy hypocotyls in two-steps HSCCC separation procedure. In contrast, prep-HPLC allowed isolation and purification of these two target compounds with significantly lower productivity and higher solvent consumption. An optimal two-phase solvent system of n-hexane–ethyl acetate–methanol–water (3:6:4:2, v/v/v/v) was selected to separate soyasapogenols in HSCCC procedure. The present investigation indicates that two-steps HSCCC can potentially provide a fast, high yielding, and more environmentally friendly tool for the preparative separation and purification of soyasapogenol A and B starting from the materials of soy hypocotyls.

摘要

大豆皂甙中大量存在于大豆下胚轴中的大豆皂甙元由于其生理活性而作为生物活性化合物非常重要。但是，缺少高效，可扩展的准备和隔离程序。这项工作扩展了研究和比较高速和逆流色谱法（HSCCC）和制备型高效液相色谱法（prep-HPLC）分别和/或组合用于大豆皂甙元A和B的制备分离中。从大豆下胚轴的原料中分两步进行HSCCC分离，分别获得0.24％和0.21％的大豆皂酚A和B，纯度分别为98.09和98.90％。相比之下，制备型HPLC可分离和纯化这两种目标化合物，且产率大大降低，溶剂消耗更高。最佳的正己烷-乙酸乙酯-甲醇-水两相溶剂系统（3：6：4：2，在HSCCC程序中选择v / v / v / v）来分离大豆皂甙元。本研究表明，两步HSCCC可以潜在地提供一种快速，高产且对环境友好的工具，用于从大豆下胚轴的材料开始制备分离和纯化大豆皂酚A和B。