Andrographolide Research Paper

Although medicinal plants have been widely used since the ancient times, the identity of the compounds that showed the desired therapeutic effect remained unknown until a few decades back. Development in the field of medicinal chemistry and pharmacology led to their structural elucidation and further helped in understanding their biological activities in the human body. The chemists synthesized these compounds thus reducing the cost of their production. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2658564/pdf/embor200912.pdf But there have been reports of adverse effects that synthesized drugs cause which has renewed the interest in the use of natural compounds (reference). Andrographolide is a bitter compound extracted from the leaves and stem of an herbaceous plant called Andrograhis paniculata. It is a diterpene lactone showing multifarious activities like anti-pyretic, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant,anticancer,(u1pdf)and hepatoprotective http://ict.sagepub.com/content/6/3/271.full.pdf+html. Water soluble andrographolide sulfonate has been recently synthesized exerting anti-sepsis action in mice. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567576912002652.

Considering the importance of andrographolide there is the need to develop extraction techniques to extract this biomolecule from natural sources. Traditional extraction techniques have the drawbacks of longer extraction time, higher extraction temperature, increased solvent consumption and mass transfer resistance. Hence novel extraction techniques like ultrasound assisted extraction (UAE), microwave assisted extraction (MAE), supercritical fluid extraction (SCFE) and accelerated solvent extraction have been developed which overcome these pitfalls http://www.sciencedir...

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... from Sigma-Aldrich. Acetonitrile and acidified water were used as the mobile phase for HPLC. Acetonitrile was of HPLC grade and ethanol used as the solvent was of AR grade. These solvents were purchased from High media, Mumbai, India for the experiments. Distilled water used as one of the mobile phase was obtained from Millipore Milli Q 50 HPLC grade.

2.2 Analysis of andrographolide

Separation of andrographolide from its extract was done using HPLC (Agilent 1260 infinity high performance auto sampler) equipped with C18 column. Mobile phase used for HPLC analysis comprised of acetonitrile and acidified water in the ratio 60:40 v/v. Isocratic elution was used to

perform HPLC analysis where the flow rate was set at 1.0 mL/min throughout the run with an injection volume of 5µl. The peak for andrographolide was detected at 223 nm with a retention time of 7.2 minutes.