Simultaneous determination of eight bioactive alkaloids in Corydalis saxicola by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode array detection

Corydalis saxicola Bunting (Papaveraceae), a traditional folk medicine, has been used to treat hepatic diseases for a long time. Owing to its significant clinical effectiveness against hepatitis, cirrhosis and hepatoma, C. saxicola and its preparation are widely applied. In this study, eight alkaloids, namely isocorydine, scoulerine, dehydrocheilanthifoline, dehydrodiscretamine, dehydroisoapocavidine, dehydrocavidine, palmatine and berberine, which have been previously proven to possess potential anti-tumour activity, were selected as the chemical markers of C. saxicola. To evaluate the quality of C. saxicola, a simple, accurate and reliable HPLC-DAD method was developed for the simultaneous determination of the above eight compounds. Separation was achieved on a Gemini (TM) C-18 column (5 mu m, 250 x 4.6 mm i.d.. Phenomenex Inc., CA, USA) with a gradient solvent system of 20 mM aqueous ammonium acetate-acetonitrile, at a flow-rate of 1.0 mL/min and detected at 270 and 280nm. All eight calibration curves showed good linearity (R-2 > 0.9992). The method was reproducible with intra- and inter-day variations of less than 5%. The recovery was in the range of 96.09-102.80%. This assay was successfully utilised to quantity the eight alkaloids in C. saxicola from different locations. The results demonstrated that this method is simple, reliable and suitable for the quality control of this medicinal herb. Copyright (c) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.