An efficient, green and easy to scale-up strategy for target-oriented isolating cadinene sesquiterpenoids from Eupatorium adenophorum Spreng.

A green and efficient strategy was established and optimized for target-oriented extraction, enrichment and separation of cadinene sesquiterpenoids from Eupatorium adenophorum Spreng., using the combination of supercritical fluid extraction, molecular distillation and industrial preparative chromatography for the first time. The extraction conditions of supercritical fluid extraction were initially optimized by orthogonal experimental design. Under the optimum conditions, the contents of 9-oxo-10,11-dehydroageraphorone and 10Hbeta-9-oxo-ageraphorone, which were 55.00% and 6.01%, respectively, were much higher than conventional extraction methods. Then, molecular distillation enrichment method was established and investigated by response surface methodology technology, which showed strong specificity for enriching target compounds and removing impurities from crude extracts. Under the optimum conditions of molecular distillation, total contents of cadinene sesquiterpenoids were increased to 89.19%. Finally, a total of 146 mg of 9-oxo-10,11-dehydroageraphorone and 29 mg of 10Hbeta-9-oxo-ageraphorone were easily obtained by industrial preparative chromatography, from 200 mg of distillation fraction, with the purities of them were both over 99%. The contents of target components were analyzed by HPLC, and structures of them were identified by high resolution MS, (1) H-NMR and (13) C-NMR. These results indicate that it is a simple, effective and eco-friendly strategy, which is easily converted into industrial scale. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.