Fingerprinting of Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge by Thin‐Layer Chromatography Scan Compared with High Speed Countercurrent Chromatography

Abstract

The components of the traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) can be influenced by soil, climate, and growth stage. Fingerprinting is an important means for its quality control. Our previous studies showed that high speed countercurrent chromatography (HSCCC) was helpful in the development of TCM fingerprinting. Since the HSCCC method is new, it is necessary to compare it with more conventional ones, such as high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), high performance capillary electrophoresis (HPCE), and thin‐layer chromatography scan (TLCS). Comparisons with HPLC and HPCE were reported in our previous studies. In this study, HSCCC was compared with the thin‐layer chromatography scan (TLCS). With TLC, a quick, convenient, and cost effective technique, 8 stable components were separated in common within 48 min, respectively, from 3 crude samples of Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge from different growth locations. In HSCCC separation, 12 components were separated, respectively, with good correspondence and precision within 13 h. Both TLCS and HSCCC were effective in showing the whole concentration distribution of all kinds of constituents in different samples. HSCCC showed better performance in analysis of tanshinones, which produced a fingerprint which contained more chemical information than that of TLCS. It was further proven that HSCCC could be a feasible and cost effective method in the development of the fingerprint of TCM.

Keywords:

• Thin‐layer chromatography scan (TLCS)
• High speed countercurrent chromatography (HSCCC)
• Fingerprint
• Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge
• Tanshinones
• Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)

Acknowledgment

We thank advanced engineer Youli Hu (Shimadzu) for generous support for the TLCS experiment.