Semipreparative separation and determination of eleutheroside E in Acanthopanax giraldii Harms by high-performance liquid chromatography

A method for the isolation, purification, and determination of eleutheroside E in Acanthopanax giraldii Harms, collected in the Sichuan province (China), is established. The water extraction of A. giraldii Harms is pre-isolated using macroporous adsorption resin (D-101) and a C18 solid-phase extraction cartridge, and the enriched extract is purified to give eleutheroside E (syringaresinol-di-O-beta-D-glucoside; liriodendrin) by semipreparative reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography. Structure identification is performed by a comparison of IR, 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR, and electrospray ionization-mass spectrometric data with the literature. The final purity of the compound is 97%. Quantitative determination of eleutheroside E in A. giraldii Harms is performed on a Zorbax SB C18 (150- x 4.6-mm i.d., 5 microm) column. The linear range of eleutheroside E is 4.85-194 mg/L (r = 0.9998), and the average recovery is 99.6-101%. The developed method is simple, reproducible, and easy to operate. It is useful for the evaluation of Acanthopanax giraldii Harms.