Furocoumarins and coumarins are heterocyclic oxygenated compounds that have a high biological activity due to their intercalating nature of DNA. These compounds are primarily responsible for food and drug interactions in grapefruits. Grapefruits are a rich source of popular health promoting bioactives and coumarins. Therefore, identification and purification of these compounds from grapefruits is warranted for detailed investigation of food-drug interactions and drug bioavailability. In the present study, a flash chromatographic method was used for the isolation and purification of these compounds from grapefruit oil and peels. The grapefruit oil was fractionated into volatile and non volatile fractions (NVF). Later, the solvent partitioning with hexane selectively enriched the minor compounds in NVF. The NV-hexane insoluble fraction was separated on a C-18 reversed phase column using flash chromatography. Furthermore, grapefruit peel hexane extract was separated on a normal phase packed silica column using flash chromatography. A total of nine compounds were purified using flash chromatography and identified as Meranzin (0.37%), bergapten (0.02%), marmin (0.43%), pranferine (1.11%), nobilitin (0.19%), dihydroxybergamottin (2.42%), heptamethoxyflavone (0.4%), osthol (0.03%) and bergamottin (12.14%) using HPLC, GCMS and NMR. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on solvent partitioning and flash chromatography of grapefruit oil for purification of minor bioactives such as Meranzin and pranferin.

Isolation and purification of minor bioactives from grapefruit

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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