Abstract: Peimisine, an isosteroidal alkaloid occurring in Fritillaria species, is a semi-synthetic precursor of cyclopamine. In this paper, high-speed counter-current chromatography (HSCCC) was applied to the separation and purification of peimisine from Fritillaria taipaiensis bulbs. The separation was performed on a TBE-300B HSCCC machine, by using solvent system of n-hexane-ethyl and acetate-methanol-water (4:5:3:5, volume ratio) at 35 ℃, rotating speed 800 r/min, flow rate 2.0 mL/min, and detection wavelength 215 nm. After a HSCCC run, 5.3 mg of target compound was obtained from 50 mg of total alkaloid extract, with the purity of 96.3% and the recovery of 87.2%. The structure of the isolate was confirmed by high performance liquid chromatography-quadruple time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-QTOF MS).

Key words: high-speed counter-current chromatography, Fritillaria taipaiensis, peimisine, isolation and purification