Separation and Preparation of Five Cyclopamine Analogs from Rhizomes of Veratrum oxysepalum Turcz. by Two-Step High-Speed Counter-Current Chromatography

Five cyclopamine analogs including jervine, veratramine, pseudojervine, veratrosine, and verdine were isolated from the rhizomes of Veratrum oxysepalum Turcz. by an efficient two-step high-speed counter-current chromatography (HSCCC) method. In the filrst step, HSCCC, dichloromethane-methanol-water (4:3.5:2, v/v/v) was employed to obtain 24.5 mg of jervine, 18.2 mg of veratramine, 9.4 mg of pseudojervine, 20.8 mg of veratrosine, and 5.2 mg of verdine from 200.0 mg of crude alkaloid extracts, with the purities of 65.7, 97.5, 95.2, 98.3, and 98.1%, respectively. After the filrst HSCCC run, the jervine-fraction was subjected to the second step HSCCC using n-hexane-ethyl acetate-methanol-water (4:5:4:5, v/v/v/v) system for further purification and 12.7 mg of jervine with 95.8% purity was obtained. The structures of isolates were identified by liquid chromatography-quadruple time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry (LC-QTOF MS/MS), H-1 and C-13 nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.