Abstract:

Acteoside,a chemical component of the traditional Chinese medicinal herb Rehmannia glutinosa,was separated from the plant by a combination of macroporous resin column chromatography and high-speed countercurrent chromatography.The static adsorption and desorption of acteoside in the crude extract were in-vestigated using four kinds of macroporous resin,among which the D101 macroporous resin presented the best adsorption and desorption rates toward the compound.The crude extract was then gradient-eluted with increa-sing volume percentages of ethanol,where it was found that the highest content of acteoside was obtained when using 10%(v/v) ethanol eluent,in which the purity of acteoside was increased from 4.9% to 32.6%.Then,the partially purified crude extract (165 mg) was further purified by high-speed countercurrent chroma-tography using a two-phase solvent system consisting of ethyl acetate-n-butanol-water (1:4:5,v/v/v),yielding 45 mg of acteoside with 96% purity.

Key words: Rehmannia glutinosa, acteoside, countercurrent chromatography, macroporous resin