Separation and purification of lanosterol, dihydrolanosterol, and cholesterol from lanolin by high‐performance counter‐current chromatography dual‐mode elution method

Abstract

Lanosterol is a potential drug for cataracts treatment, which can reverse the aggregation of intracrystalline proteins. The low concentration in lanolin calls for high‐performance separation methods. In this study, a counter‐current chromatography dual‐mode elution method was developed for the first time to separate and purify lanosterol from hexane extract of lanolin after saponification, in which the column was first eluted with the lower phase as mobile phase in head‐to‐tail mode, followed by the upper phase in the tail‐to‐head mode. High purity of lanosterol, dihydrolanosterol, and cholesterol can be obtained simultaneously. A solvent system composed of n‐heptane/acetonitrile/ethyl acetate (5:5:1, v/v/v) was selected and optimized via partition coefficient determination. Compounds such as 111 mg lanosterol, 84 mg dihydrolanosterol, and 183 mg cholesterol with high purity of 99.77, 95.71, and 91.43%, respectively, analyzed by high‐performance liquid chromatography were obtained within 80 min from 700 mg crude extract from 1.78 g lanolin. The method was also used to improve the purity of commercial lanosterol product from 66.97 to above 99%. Counter‐current chromatography could serve as a potential and powerful technique for commercial production of highly pure lanosterol.

The Study of a Novel Paeoniflorin-Converting Enzyme from Cunninghamella blakesleeana

“…The sample size was then scaled up to 97 mg in 2 mL to inject onto the semi-preparative column. The dual-mode elution strategy [ 59 ] was employed in the separation due to the high partition coefficient values of the P3. The column was first eluted with the lower phase as mobile phase in head-to-tail mode (L-I-H) for 60–65 min, followed with the upper phase as mobile phase in the tail-to-head mode (U-O-T).…”

Phytosterols: Potential Metabolic Modulators in Neurodegenerative Diseases

“…Lanosterol is a ∆ 8,24 phytosterol formed from the cyclization of 2,3-oxidosqualene catalyzed by lanosterol synthetase [22]. It was shown to be a potential candidate in the treatment of cataracts by disrupting the aggregations of intracrystalline proteins [70]. Several studies suggested it as a promising modulator of neurodegenerative diseases [71][72][73][74].…”

Recent progress in separation prediction of counter‐current chromatography

“…In the late 1970s, HSCCC was first introduced by Yoichiro Ito [2], which promoted the rapid development of liquid‐liquid chromatographic separation technology. Nowadays, the main applications of CCC involve separations and purifications of compounds in n products [3–4], isomers [5–8], amino acids [9], peptides [10], proteins [11], sterols [12], antibiotics [13], pesticides [14,15], environmental pollutants [16], inorganic compounds [17], and so on. The fundamental methodology of CCC is that multiple settling/mixing equilibrium of two immiscible liquid phase occurs to achieve the expected separation resolutions of different analytes in stationary phase or mobile phase according to their partition coefficient ( K D ) [2].…”