Centrifugal partition chromatography directly interfaced with mass spectrometry for the fast screening and fractionation of major xanthones in Garcina mangostana.

Xanthones are well known for their interesting phytochemical properties, which make them attractive to the pharmaceutical and medicinal industry. We have therefore developed a method to analyse the major xanthones in Garcina mangostana. The xanthones were extracted by pressurized liquid extraction with ethanol and separated at the semi-preparative scale by centrifugal partition chromatography (CPC) with a biphasic solvent system consisting of heptane/ethyl acetate/methanol/water (2:1:2:1, v/v/v/v). A CPC-electrospray ionisation MS coupling was performed and used to simultaneously separate and identify the compounds. Thanks to a variable flow splitter and an additional stream of ethanol/1 mol L(-1) ammonium acetate (95:5, v/v), all the compounds were ionised, detected and monitored whatever the solvents used in mobile phase for the CPC separation. The dual mode or elution-extrusion which are less solvent-consuming and faster than the elution mode were used without loss of ionisation and detection.