Analytical and Preparative Hyphenation of Countercurrent Chromatography (CCC/CPC) to Structure Elucidation Methods in the Field of Natural Product Recovery and Identification

Dear Colleagues,

Since Dr. Yoichiro Ito (NIH, Bethesda, USA) introduced “the coil planet centrifuge” in 1966 (published in Nature), countercurrent chromatography and related techniques have started to work at a higher efficiency using strong and fast-changing gravitation force fields. This technology was originally designed for the separation of human blood cells but then evolved rapidly into a powerful fractionation tool for the preparative recovery of bioactive products from all kinds of natural resources. The use of immiscible solvent systems, specifically designed for a current separation problem, is one of the unique features of this methodology where mobile and stationary chromatographic phases are in the liquid state.

Looking back over a development period of more than fifty years, many innovative approaches in CCC/CPC have evolved, including powerful system designs. The practicability of natural product chemists holds potential for the direct implementation of structure elucidation technology for the fast identification of target metabolites.  

Therefore, this Special Issue will cover “Analytical and Preparative Hyphenation of Countercurrent Chromatography (CCC/CPC) to Structure Elucidation Methods in the Field of Natural Product Recovery and Identification” and will collect original research/review articles dealing with innovative developments in this field.

Some selected topics from the keyword compilation mentioned here are off-line and on-line hyphenation experiments to CCC/CPC using sensitive analytical detection methods, such as liquid mass-spectrometry (LC-ESI-, APCI-, and MALDI-MS) or gas chromatography (GC-MS) for molecular-weight based target recovery; structural elucidation by 1D/2D-NMR for direct identification or compound mapping; two dimensional CCC/CPC (heart-cutting) applications; and orthogonal couplings such as CCC/CPC to LC-MS or to GC-MS for deeper investigation of metabolite profiles of natural product extracts.

Another topic of relevance is the combination of CCC/CPC with bio-assay-guided fractionation methods for lead-structure search and drug development.

Dr. Gerold Jerz
Guest Editor

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