Countercurrent Chromatography (CCC/CPC) as Versatile Separation ‘Tool-Box’ in the Field of Natural Product Recovery

Dear Colleagues,

Since Dr. Yoichiro Ito (NIH, Bethesda, USA) introduced “the coil planet centrifuge” in 1966 (published in Nature), countercurrent chromatography and its related techniques have started to work at higher efficiencies using stronger and faster changing gravitation force fields. This technology was originally designed for the separation of human blood cells but then evolved rapidly to become a powerful fractionation tool in the field of recovery of bioactive natural products. The use of immiscible solvent mixtures that have been specifically designed for separation problems is one of the unique features of this methodology, whereby mobile and stationary chromatographic phases are in the liquid state.

Looking back at a development period spanning more than fifty years, many innovative CCC/CPC approaches have evolved, including powerful system designs For natural product chemists, there is the potential for the direct implementation of structural elucidation technology and of off- or on-line biological evaluation in bio-assay-guided fractionation protocols.  

Therefore, this Special Issue will cover “Countercurrent chromatography (CCC/CPC) as versatile ‘tool-box’ in the field of natural product recovery” and will collect original research/ review articles dealing with innovative developments in this field.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

• CCC and CPC in natural product recovery (all biological sources);
• Recovery protocols and strategies for high value natural products;
• Bio-assay-guided isolation procedures;
• Off-line or on-line hyphenation to mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR);
• Two-dimensional CCC or CPC (heart-cutting), or CCC/CPC x GC x LC-MS;
• Polarity-modifying additives for solvent systems;
• Chiral additives for enantiomer/ epimer separations;
• Use of natural deep eutectic solvent systems (NADES);
• Software based prediction of natural product separations;
• Aqueous-two-phase-systems (ATPS);
• Ion exchange and ion-pair chromatography (IP);
• Green solvent systems for CCC/CPC;
• New CCC/CPC column and centrifuge designs for improved natural product recovery.

Something that is highly relevant is the combination of CCC/CPC with bio-assay-guided fractionation methods for the search of lead structures in the field of natural products from all kinds of resources, as nature is still the “Fountain for the Drugs of the Future”.

Overall, the present Special Issue aims to cover novel research directions in the field of natural product recovery using CCC and CPC technologies.

Dr. Gerold Jerz
Prof. Dr. João Henrique G. Lago
Guest Editors

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