Recent Applications of Capillary Electrophoresis in the Determination of Active Compounds in Medicinal Plants and Pharmaceutical Formulations

Abstract

The present review summarizes scientific reports from between 2010 and 2019 on the use of capillary electrophoresis to quantify active constituents (i.e., phenolic compounds, coumarins, protoberberines, curcuminoids, iridoid glycosides, alkaloids, triterpene acids) in medicinal plants and herbal formulations. The present literature review is founded on PRISMA guidelines and selection criteria were formulated on the basis of PICOS (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome, Study type). The scrutiny reveals capillary electrophoresis with ultraviolet detection as the most frequently used capillary electromigration technique for the selective separation and quantification of bioactive compounds. For the purpose of improvement of resolution and sensitivity, other detection methods are used (including mass spectrometry), modifiers to the background electrolyte are introduced and different extraction as well as pre-concentration techniques are employed. In conclusion, capillary electrophoresis is a powerful tool and for given applications it is comparable to high performance liquid chromatography. Short time of execution, high efficiency, versatility in separation modes and low consumption of solvents and sample make capillary electrophoresis an attractive and eco-friendly alternative to more expensive methods for the quality control of drugs or raw plant material without any relevant decrease in sensitivity.

Plant-derived natural products for drug discovery: current approaches and prospects

“…Mass spectrometric (MS) fingerprints also can be developed. Chromatographic fingerprints can be obtained using Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) [ 77 ], High-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) [ 18 ], High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) [ 17 ], Ultra-high performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) [ 105 ], Capillary electrophoresis (CE) [ 29 ], Gas chromatography (GC) [ 64 ], Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS) [ 61 ], Two-dimensional gas chromatography-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GCxGC-TOFMS) [ 63 ].…”

Advances and strategies for capillary electrophoresis in the characterization of traditional Chinese medicine: A review of the past decade (2011–2021)

“…Studies in the last decade have examined and reviewed the status of capillary electrophoresis (CE) for the separation, subsequent determination, quantitation, and quality control of TCMs (Table 1). CE and CE-mass spectrometry (MS) have attracted research attention (Ma et al, 2018;Gackowski et al, 2021;Przybylska et al, 2021), as detailed in our search discussed in the following sentences. In particular, CE has played a vital role in TCM analysis as a reliable and sensitive analytical tool; thus, CE is a suitable platform for TCM identification, separation, and quality control.…”

“…Additionally, CE has gained prominence in recent years due to its high separation efficiency, minimal solvent consumption, small sample volume, low running cost, repeatability, and adaptability of various separation modes. Moreover, CE has recently been classified as an eco-friendly, powerful tool for analyzing different types of active constituents present in TCM, medicinal plants, and natural products used in TCM (Gackowski et al, 2021).…”

Determination of Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors via Capillary Electrophoresis with Tandem Mass Spectrometry and Online Stacking Preconcentration

“…In general, the composition of zones in the capillary is “programmed” to focus analytes of interest. The simplest mechanism (stacking) is based on the analyte velocity change (e.g., slowing down) in a two-discontinuous-solutions system (e.g., at the boundary formed by diluted BGE and non-diluted BGE) [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ].…”