Application of immunoaffinity purification technology as the pretreatment technology for traditional Chinese medicine: Its application to analysis of hesperidin and narirutin in traditional Chinese medicine preparations containing Citri reticulatae Perica

• An immunoaffinity chromatography column for the specific extraction and enrichment of hesperidin and narirutin was prepared.
• The efficiency of the prepared IAC column for the extraction of hesperidin and narirutin from TCM preparations was evaluated.
• The application of immunological methods to the pretreatment of effective components in traditional Chinese medicines could remove interferences and simplify the pretreatment steps.
• “One standard using for a series of TCM products with similar species or compounds” can be realized by using IAC column.

In the present study, the feasibility of immunoaffinity chromatography (IAC) as a purification technology for the analysis of bioactive components in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) was evaluated. IAC was used to analyze hesperidin (HP) and narirutin (NR) in TCM preparations containing Citri reticulatae Pericarpium (CRP, Chenpi in Chinese). An IAC column for the specific extraction and enrichment of HP and NR from TCM preparations containing CRP was developed and characterized. After HP reacted with carbonyl diimidazole and coupled to protein, it was used to immune mice for the generation of antibody. Through cell fusion, cloning and screening, monoclonal antibody was obtained. The IAC column was constructed by covalently coupling specific monoclonal antibody against HP and NR to CNBr-activated Sepharose 4B and packed into a common solid phase extraction cartridge. The extraction conditions including loading, washing and eluting, as well as flow rate for the extraction of HP and NR were optimized. Under optimal conditions, the maximum capacity, extraction recovery rate and stability of IAC column was also characterized. Results revealed that the maximum capacity of IAC column for HP and NR was approximately 16 μg and the relative binding capacity per 1 mL of the column volume was 27 μg. The extraction recovery rate of IAC column for HP and NR at three spiked levels was in the range of 94.05–109.15%. After the repeated application for 5 times, no significant loss of specific recognition was observed. Using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) as an effective analytic tool, HP and NR could be successfully separated via IAC column without the inference from impurities, suggesting that the extraction of HP and NR using the prepared IAC column is feasible. The application of IAC can solve the problem of quantitative analysis due to severe interference or low content. Furthermore, pretreatment methods in different matrixes can be unified. The IAC purification procedure can be used as an alternative effective analytical method for the pretreatment of bioactive components in TCM.