Development and optimization of a method for the separation of platycosides in Platycodi Radix by comprehensive two-dimensional liquid chromatography with mass spectrometric detection

Comprehensive two-dimensional chromatography (LC × LC) using combinations of two columns (C₁₈ × CN and C₁₈ × NH₂) was employed with electrospray (ESI) mass spectrometry to analyze platycosides from root extract. Based on the capability of the C₁₈, CN and NH₂ columns to separate the platycosides, the orthogonality in two-dimensional space according to each combination of columns was predicted from the correlation coefficients between the retention times of the 17 compounds separated by the independent CN and C₁₈ columns, and NH₂ and C₁₈ columns. The expected distribution of the peaks was also compared with the two-dimensional plots obtained by practical separation in an LC × LC system. The increased peak capacities using C₁₈ × NH₂ allowed three minor components and five isomers of the platycosides to be newly separated, which were not identified with 1D-LC using the individual C₁₈ column, whereas the combination of C₁₈ × CN did not result in any improvement of the separation performance.