Development of an innovative maceration technique to optimize extraction and phase partition of natural products

Anthonin Gori (1, 2) , Benjamin Boucherle (1) , Aurélien Rey (2) , Maxime Rome (3, 4) , Nicola Fuzzati (2) , Marine Peuchmaur (1)

1 DPM - Département de pharmacochimie moléculaire
2 CHANEL Parfums Beauté
3 LECA - Laboratoire d'Ecologie Alpine
4 Jardin du Lautaret : découverte et sciences (Lautaret)

The extraction of active components from plants is the first crucial step in the field of natural product research. In the case of non-targeted extraction with an objective to isolate and characterize as many compounds as possible, the most classical technique, and the simplest to implement, is the Soxhlet extraction (SE). However, this method does not allow to extract all the compounds from the plant. Indeed, the use of several solvents allowing a variation of polarity is especially suitable since natural products are so diverse with various physicochemical properties (e.g. polarity, solubility…). Thus the second most used technique is the extraction by successive macerations using solvents of increasing polarity. If this method is frequently used, very few studies are available to rationalize and optimize it. Furthermore, this extraction technique still requires some enhancement mainly for efficiency, economic, environmental and time constraint reasons. In this work, we present an innovative method of successive macerations using a mixture of solvents with the aim of simultaneously improving the yield, the partition of the compounds between the different phases and reducing the volume of solvent. Triphasic systems were prepared by mixing five different solvents (n-heptane, ethyl acetate, acetonitrile, butan-1-ol and water) in various proportions. Seven natural compounds of different polarity were then dissolved in these mixtures. After decantation, an apolar, an intermediate and a polar phase were obtained and analyzed to evaluate the partition of each compound. The best triphasic system showed a very performant phase partition. Indeed, the majority of the relevant secondary metabolites are found in the intermediate phase while primary metabolites were recovered in apolar and polar phases. This triphasic system was subsequently used to perform three successive macerations with a polarity gradient on aerial parts of a model plant, Anthyllis vulneraria L. Our results showed an overall good yield compared to conventional maceration techniques, while reducing time of extractions and volume of solvents.

Mots clés: Natural products; extraction; maceration optimization; phase partition; triphasic solvent system

Domaines: Chimie

Anthonin Gori, Benjamin Boucherle, Aurélien Rey, Maxime Rome, Nicola Fuzzati, et al.. Development of an innovative maceration technique to optimize extraction and phase partition of natural products. Fitoterapia, 2021, 148, pp.104798. ⟨10.1016/j.fitote.2020.104798⟩. ⟨hal-04014497⟩