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Abstract

IntroductionIn the first part of this review [1], the use of direct NMR hyphenation in natural products research has been discussed. The direct HPLC-NMR methods were defined as methods in which the NMR data acquisition is performed on the HPLC column eluate [1]. This implies either a direct connection between the NMR spectrometer and the HPLC apparatus, or use of storage capillaries in which the HPLC eluate is temporarily stored prior to acquisition of NMR data.Many useful results related to natural products have been obtained using direct HPLC-NMR methods [1] [30]. However, the direct combination of state-of-the-art separation technology with the most powerful and versatile tool for structure elucidation of organic molecules in solution suffers from various practical problems. In short, these practical limitations are due to somewhat contradictory requirements of HPLC and NMR with respect to solvents and time-scale of the experiment, and thus compromises are necessary in order to hyphenate these two techniques. For example, 1 H-NMR spectra are preferably acquired in deuterated solvents, but use of deuterated solvents for HPLC is expensive and the selection is limited. Some useful HPLC eluents, such as buffers with high ionic strengths, are directly undesirable in direct HPLC-NMR hyphenation. Gradient elution of HPLC columns, required in most separations, implies constantly changing magnetic susceptibility and field homogeneity in the NMR flowprobe, not to mention variations of analyte chemical shifts with solvent composition. Hyphenated NMR Methods in Natural Products AbstractThis review describes the principles and performance of a novel and highly promising hyphenated technique, HPLC-SPE-NMR, which is based on post-column analyte trapping by solid-phase extraction. The analytes are subsequently eluted from the SPE cartridges using deuterated solvents. This indirect HPLC-NMR hyphenation offers numerous advantages compared to direct HPLC-NMR methods. Multiple trapping leads to a dramatic increase of analyte amounts available for NMR, enabling acquisition of high-quality 2D NMR data within a short time. Other new developments, including combination of solenoidal coil capillary flow-probes with microflow HPLC, are also discussed. Fast extract dereplication using these techniques enables focusing of isolation efforts on truly novel and promising natural products, based on precise structural data obtained with crude extracts or fractions.