Preparative separation of tripdiolide from Chinese traditional herb by multidimensional CCC

Multidimensional countercurrent chromatography (CCC) was used for isolation and purification of tripdiolide from Tripterygium wilfordii Hook F. with a pair of two-phase solvent systems composed of n-hexane-dichloromethane-methanol-water (3:22:17:8, v/v/v/v) and chloroform-methanol-water (4:3:2, v/v/v), both of which were selected by analytical high-speed CCC. About 1 g of crude AA extract was separated using two preparative units of the HSCCC centrifuge, yielding 7.8 mg (0.78% w/w) of tripdiolide with a purity over 98%.