Purification of alkaloids from Catharanthus roseus by pH-Zone Refining Centrifugal Partition Chromatography: process intensification and scale up

Centrifugal Partition Chromatography (CPC) is a versatile support free chromatographic technique involving the distribution and transfer of solutes between at least two immiscible liquid phases according to their partition coefficient, that avoids irreversible adsorption of the analytes due to the absence of solid support and allows a total recovery of various injected samples. The introduction of the so-called displacement mode dedicated to the purification of ionizable compounds, as well as the development of modeling approaches [1] taking into account both hydrodynamic and mass transfer aspects have attracted increasing interest to the area.

This communication describes the use of CPC in the pH-zone refining mode for the purification of two indolomonoterpenic alkaloids, namely vindoline and catharanthine, from an industrial extract of Catharanthus roseus. The scale up of the separation on various pilot-scale columns [2] was achieved thanks to a numerical model allowing the prediction of chromatograms, highlighting the potential of CPC for the industrial purification of high added value compounds.

[1] Kotland A, Chollet S, Diard C, Autret JM, Marchal L, Renault JH. J. Chromatogr. A, 2015, 1391:80 – 87.

[2] Kotland A, Chollet S, Diard C, Autret J.-M, Meucci J, Renault J.-H, Marchal L, J. Chromatogr. A, 2016, 1474, 59 – 70.