Taglioni Enrico, Capriotti Anna Laura, Cerrato Andrea, Laganà Aldo, Montone Carmela Maria, Piovesana Susy, Cavaliere Chiara
Department of Chemistry, Sapienza University of Rome, piazzale Aldo 5, 00185 Rome, Italy.
J Chromatogr A. 2025 Sep 13;1758:466198. doi: 10.1016/j.chroma.2025.466198. Epub 2025 Jul 7.
Polyphenols are a large group of plant secondary metabolites, synthesized mostly through the phenylpropanoid pathway, and they comprise flavonoids, stilbenes, lignans, and simple phenolic acids. The characterization of these natural compounds is challenging, due to the complexity of plant extracts, the variety of polyphenols forms in the various plant organs, and the limited availability of authentic standards. The analysis of polyphenols is mostly achieved by reversed-phase liquid chromatography (LC), but poor retention and resolution are often observed for the polar ones. Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) represents a versatile chromatographic technique, and a valid and greener alternative to traditional LC, suitable for a heterogeneous class of compounds as polyphenols, where very polar or chiral compound separation is requested. The advancements in instrumental technology allowed the coupling with mass spectrometry (MS) and the introduction of sub-2 µm stationary phases, and paved the way to the use of SFC for the analysis of these compounds. The present review provides an overview of the latest SFC methods for the characterization of polyphenols, over the period 2019-2024. Coupling with MS and applications in plants are mostly discussed in this review, along with other selected applications suitable to critically describe the state-of-the-art and potential of this technique in the field of polyphenol characterization. The survey indicated that SFC is still underutilized in this field, particularly in combination with MS, mainly because of the need for extensive optimization of several critical parameters. Most of the described works are quantitative targeted studies, and only a few reports use metabolomics approaches for large-scale analysis of polyphenols. As a result, SFC applications have been limited to a small range of polyphenols rather than complex mixtures, making this technique still not competitive with LC. Nonetheless, SFC has potential, especially in filling the existing gap of LC for analysis, as better characterizations can be obtained for polar and chiral polyphenols.
多酚是一大类植物次生代谢产物，主要通过苯丙烷途径合成，包括黄酮类、芪类、木脂素类和简单酚酸类。由于植物提取物的复杂性、各种植物器官中多酚形式的多样性以及标准品的有限可得性，对这些天然化合物进行表征具有挑战性。多酚的分析大多通过反相液相色谱（LC）来实现，但对于极性多酚，常常观察到保留性和分离度较差的情况。超临界流体色谱（SFC）是一种通用的色谱技术，是传统LC的一种有效且更环保的替代方法，适用于需要分离极性很强或手性化合物的多酚这类异质化合物。仪器技术的进步使得SFC能够与质谱（MS）联用，并引入了亚2 µm固定相，为使用SFC分析这些化合物铺平了道路。本综述概述了2019 - 2024年期间用于多酚表征的最新SFC方法。本综述主要讨论了SFC与MS的联用及其在植物中的应用，以及其他一些有助于批判性描述该技术在多酚表征领域的现状和潜力的选定应用。调查表明，SFC在该领域的应用仍未得到充分利用，特别是与MS联用的情况，主要是因为需要对几个关键参数进行广泛优化。大多数已描述的研究是定量靶向研究，只有少数报告使用代谢组学方法对多酚进行大规模分析。因此，SFC的应用仅限于一小部分多酚而非复杂混合物，这使得该技术仍无法与LC竞争。尽管如此，SFC具有潜力，特别是在填补LC分析存在的空白方面，因为对于极性和手性多酚可以获得更好的表征。
