Improved high‐performance liquid chromatographic method for simultaneous determination of 12 cytotoxic caged xanthones in gamboges, a potential anticancer resin from Garcinia hanburyi

Abstract

The potential anti-tumor activity of gamboges, a herbal medicine derived from Garcinia hanburyi, has increasingly gained the interest of scientist worldwide. The major components of gamboges are cytotoxic caged xanthones. In the present study, an improved HPLC method was developed to simultaneously quantify 12 caged xanthones, including three pairs of epimers and four pairs of trans-cis isomers, i.e. forbesione, isomorellic acid, morellic acid, R-30-hydroxygambogic acid, S-30-hydroxygambogic acid, isogambogenic acid, gambogenic acid, gambogellic acid, R-isogambogic acid, S-isogambogic acid, R-gambogic acid and S-gambogic acid. This method was validated to be sensitive, precise and accurate with limits of detection of 0.03-0.08 microg/mL, overall intra-day and inter-day variations less than 7.9% and overall recovery over 93.2%. The correlation coefficients (r(2)) of the calibration curves were higher than 0.995 for all analytes. The newly established method was successfully applied to reveal the difference in the chemical profiles and contents of these analytes in gamboges from different origins. It can be concluded that this method was not only an effective quality control method to ensure the safety and efficacy consistency of gamboges, but also a useful tool for screening and determining more potent cytotoxic xanthones with potential anticancer activity.

Recent Research on Bioactive Xanthones from Natural Medicine: Garcinia hanburyi

“…R-Isogambogic acid, S-isogambogic acid, R-gambogic acid, S-gambogic acid, forbesione, isomorellic acid, morellic acid, R-30-hydroxygambogic acid, S-30-hydroxygambogic acid, isogambogenic acid, gambogenic acid, and gambogellic acid were separated with an improved HPLC method validated to be precise, sensitive, and accurate (8).…”

Analysis of caged xanthones from the resin of Garcinia hanburyi using ultra-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry

“…had been established to analyze the caged xanthones in the Gamboges samples [23][24][25][26][27]. However, all these methods required long analysis time and provided little structural information.…”

“…Interest in these caged Garcinia xanthones has attracted many attempts to synthesize it using Claisen/Diels-Alder/Claisen rearrangement [17,18]. The continuous investigation on G. hanburyi in our laboratory led to a series of reports of gambogic acid derivatives with anticancer activities [5,10,[19][20][21][22][23][24]. Due to the slight difference in the complicated structures of these gambogic acid derivatives, it has always been a challenge to separate and identify these analogues.…”

QUANTIFICATION OF ANTICANCER POLYISOPRENYLATED BENZOPHENONES GARCINOL AND ISOGARCINOL USING MULTIPLE REACTION MONITORING LC-ESI-MS-MS IN ULTRA-SOUND ASSISTED EXTRACTS OFGARCINIA INDICAFRUITS

“…Li et al (2008) [25] reported HPLC and LCMS methods determination of 12 cytotoxic caged prenylated xanthones in gamboges resin from Garcinia hanburyi.…”