An accurate and reliable analytical strategy for simultaneous determination of target furanocoumarins and flavonoids in cosmetic and pharmaceutical samples by ultra-high performance supercritical fluid chromatography

Furanocoumarins and flavonoids have various important biological activities and wide application. In the present study, a rapid and reliable supercritical fluid chromatography method was proposed for the separation of 10 target components including 8 furanocoumarins and 2 flavonoids. After detailed condition optimization, the 10 target compounds can be baseline separated on a Trefoil CEL1 (3.0 mm x 150 mm, 2.5 mu m) column using gradient elution. A 0.07% (v/v) trifluoroacetic acid in ethanol was determined to be the most proper mobile phase for the separation of target compounds. The column temperature, back pressure, flow rate were set at 36 celcius, 2000 psi, 1.0 mL min-1 to 1.4 mL min-1, respectively. The ten target compounds were analyzed within 24 min using the optimized conditions. Under the optimized conditions, all the target compounds showed good linearity with linear correlation coefficients higher than 0.995, and satisfactory recovery in the range of 83.52-112.92%. All these results showed that the developed ultra-high performance supercritical fluid chro-matography method was reliable and effective. Finally, the application of the developed method to cosmetic, Psoraleae fructus and Angelicae dahuricae radix samples were presented. The results highlight the applicability of the ultra-high performance supercritical fluid chromatography method to the analysis of interested compounds in pharmaceutical and cosmetic samples.

Automated summary

In this study, a rapid and reliable supercritical fluid chromatography method was proposed for the separation of 10 target components including 8 furanocoumarins and 2 flavonoids. After detailed condition optimization, all the target compounds can be baseline separated on a Trefoil CEL1 column using gradient elution. The developed method was successfully applied to the analysis of cosmetic, Psoraleae fructus and Angelicae dahuricae radix samples, demonstrating its applicability in pharmaceutical and cosmetic sample analysis.