Preparative purification of peoniflorin and albiflorin from peony rhizome using macroporous resin and medium-pressure liquid chromatography

Peoniflorin (PF) and albiflorin (AF) are two principal components of Paeonia species, which exhibit various biological activities such as improvement of blood circulation and immunoregulating function. To further utilization of waste parts of peony plants, an efficient method for preparative purification of these two ingredients from white peony rhizome was developed based on macroporous resin (MAR) and medium-pressure liquid chromatography (MPLC). The separation characteristics of nine typical MARs were investigated by static adsorption/desorption experiments, and LX38 was revealed as optimal one. Further static experiments with LX38 resin indicated that the adsorbents fitted well to the pseudo-second-order kinetics model and both Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models. Based on the optimal process parameters, a large-scale preparation was successfully applied. After one run treatment with LX38, the contents of PF and AF were increased 15-fold to 24.5 and 16.8% in the refined extract, respectively. Both purified compounds were obtained from refined extract by reversed-phase MPLC at second-stage separation. The process developed is better because of its low cost, high efficiency, and procedural simplicity making it a potential approach for large-scale production of PF and AF for their further applications in functional foods and pharmaceuticals.