Development and validation of a simple thin layer chromatographic method for the analysis of artemisinin in Artemisia annua L. plant extracts

Owing to the development of parasite resistance to standard antimalarial treatments like chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, the demand for Artemisia annua, a key ingredient for new and highly effective antimalarial drugs, is huge. Therefore selective and precise methods to determine the content of artemisinin in dry plant material and in raw impure extracts are needed. In this work a method is described for the clear separation and extraction of artemisinin from other plant components in the Artemisia annua L. plant by thin-layer chromatography (TLC). To obtain optimal extraction and recovery efficiency, several parameters were evaluated, including choice of extraction solvent, TLC plate type and sensitivity between UV and visible light. Method validation was performed on both the dry plant material and non-purified plant extracts. Toluene presented the highest extraction efficiency compared with petroleum ether, hexane and methanol. Reversed-phase plates showed more concentrated spots than normal-phase plates, while the sensitivity of the analysis in UV was comparable to that in visible light but less precise. The impure plant extracts were analyzed by both TLC and HPLC-UV at 215 nm and both methods met the requirements for linearity, selectivity, precision and accuracy. Hence, the proposed TLC method can easily be used for both qualitative and quantitative control of the raw plant extract in areas where advanced methods are scarce.