Günther BonnAustria

Innovative approaches in analytical chemistry have become increasingly important for natural product research and new advances in separation science enable research into inaccessible areas of natural product isolation. Since herbal preparations like plant extracts are often multi-component mixtures with hundreds or thousands of small molecules at different concentrations, their separation and analysis is often difficult to perform. Thus, novel enrichment and purification methods based on advanced solid-phase extraction techniques have been developed to reduce the complexity of plant extracts, while HPLC has been used for separation, pre-concentration and fractionation. The ability to apply these techniques to robotic systems enables high throughput screening. Significant progress has been made in developing new stationary phases that can be tailored to a specific application and thus offer endless possibilities for optimizing selectivity. A further coupling to high-resolution mass spectrometry facilitates the identification and quantification of active ingredients in natural products. Additionally, the combination of separation science with spectroscopy offers the possibility to combine various technologies in phytopharmacy as well as food analysis. Near- and mid- infrared spectroscopy enable quick and simultaneous qualitative and quantitative analysis of raw plants and liquid extracts without destruction. Moreover, infrared imaging has been used to study the distribution of active substances in plant materials. All of these approaches offer new strategies for quality control in phytoanalysis and enable deeper insights into the biochemical background of medically relevant questions. In this presentation, novel approaches in analytical chemistry for various applications in the areas of phytopharmacy, phytocosmetics and phytonutrients are demonstrated and discussed.