Fritillaria Alkaloids Composition And Quality Of Research

ChuanBeimu are dried bulbs of many species of plants from Fritillaria L.{Liliaceae). There are about 130 species all over the world, about 34 species in China. Its bulbs are widely used for the antitussive, expectorant, antibacterial, sedative, and so forth. Chemical and pharmacological study of ChuanBeimu showed that the steroidal and isosteroidal alkaloids are major and biological active components.This paper used the alkaloids isolated from Fritillaria Cirrhosa D.Don as standards, established a HPLC-ELSD method for the determination of alkaloids in the species of F. Cirrhosa D.Don.12 compounds were isolated from the bulbs of F. Cirrhosa. 10 of them were alkaloids, and others non-alkaloids constituents. The structures of alkaloids have been established to be Chuanbeinone(Ⅰ); Imperialine(Sipeimine Ⅱ ); Peimine(Verticine Ⅲ); Peimisine( Ⅳ ); Solanidine(Ⅴ); Peiminine(Verticinone Ⅵ ); p-sitosterol(Ⅶ) by spectroscopic analysis(¹H-NMR, ¹³C-NMR, DEPT, EI-MS)and chemical evidence respectively.Imperialine, chuanbeinone and peimisine are the major biologically active isosteroidal alkaloids in bulbs of F. Cirrhosa. Few sensitive and accurate analytical methods have been developed for the quantification of the active alkaloids of Beimus due to the lack of chromaphores in most of these alkaloids. HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography)- ELSD (evaporative light scattering detector) method was used for the quantification of chromophore-lacking alkaloids: imperialine,chuanbeinone and peimisine in bulbs of F. Cirrhosa, to improve the sensitivity of HPLC method . This method provides good reproducibility and sensitivity for the quantification of 3 major isosteroidal alkaloids in the bulbs of F. Cirrhosa. The assay was successfully utilized to quantify the major biologically active alkaloids in several Fritillaria species. The results demonstrate that this method is simple, accurate, and suitable for the quality control of this commonly used antitussive traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) herb, Bulbs Fritillaria.