Shradhanjali Singh, Anil Kumar Singh
ABSTRACT
Nature has afforded a number of interesting chemicals to be used in medicine, cosmetics, agriculture and others. The success in the studies of complex extracts of natural products depends on the development of new analytical techniques for the analysis of extracts. In view of increased separation efficiency, improved resolution and faster analysis time, Liquid chromatography established a method involving smaller particle size (<2µm) and high pressure (> 350bar). With the introduction of Ultra-High Pressure Liquid Chromatography (UHPLC), in 2004 new opportunities are emerging in the pharmaceutical industry for obtaining rapid analytical separations without sacrificing high-quality results in terms of resolution, accuracy, and reliability. To ensure the accurate quantification of the selected marker compound in natural products hyphenated techniques includes UHPLC-MS, SFE-UHPLC and UHPLC-DAD-ESI-MS. The present review seeks a newly developed analytical method as Ultra High Pressure Liquid chromatography together with the hyphenated techniques and its applications to natural products. This technique is very versatile and powerful tool for the separation of natural product from crude extracts for selective detection and general profiling. The technique is precise, robust, faster and sensitive and relies upon smaller volumes of organic solvents than HPLC. The advantages of introducing UHPLC are a decrease in sample turnaround time for both manufacturing and product development, the use of less organic solvents, and a reduction in generated waste.
Key words: UHPLC, natural product, hyphenated techniques, product development.