Separation of anti-ulcer flavonoids from Artemisia extracts by high-speed countercurrent chromatography.

High-speed countercurrent chromatography (HSCCC) was applied to separate two anti-ulcer flavonoids, eupatilin (5,7-dihydroxy-6,3',4'-trimethoxyflavone, 1) and jaceosidin (5,7,4'-trihydroxy-6,3'-dimethoxyflavone, 2), isolated from the ethanol, ethyl acetate and semi-purified ethanol extract of dietary wormwood (Artemisia princeps). The two phase solvent system comprising n-hexane-chloroform-methanol-water (2:5:5:2, v/v/v/v) was employed to HSCCC and the flow rate of mobile phase was optimised at 1.3ml/min. Utilising this method, the recovery rate and purity of eupatilin (1) and jaceosidin (2) separated from three Artemisia extracts were evaluated to be over 95% and 90%, respectively. These results suggest that countercurrent separation method can be applied to isolate two anti-ulcer flavonoids, eupatilin (1) and jaceosidin (2), selectively in one step, and to produce anti-ulcer flavonoid-enriched preparations.