The New Type of Liquid Chromatography—Colloidal High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (CHPLC): Further Applications

The recent paper by I. Brondz (2018), “One-Step Procedure for Direct Purification of Pediocin-Like Bacteriocins and Cationic Antimicrobial Peptides from Complex Culture Medium on an Analytical, Semipreparative, and Preparative Scale. A New Type of Liquid Chromatography—Colloidal High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (CHPLC)” (International Journal of Analytical Mass Spectrometry and Chromatography, 6, 41-49, https://doi.org/10.4236/ijamsc.2018.63004), described a new type of CHPLC. This technique allows colloidal liquids and suspensions to be chromatographed directly despite the presence in the liquids of material such as bacteria, fungi, and other soft and hard particles. The significance of this development lies in enabling the single-step cleanup and concentration of the target substance from a complex mixture of soluble molecules in the presence of insoluble particles by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The technique also allows the use of viscose liquids (as described in Brondz (2018) that are not suitable for analysis by conventional HPLC. In the previous paper, emphasis was placed on describing the applications of the techniques for the preparation of target substances such as small peptides, bacteriocins, bacitracin, and lysosome. Normally, the industrial preparation of these substances requires multistep procedures, which are time- and labor-consuming, and typically results in significant loss of target material and specific activity. In the present paper, the application of CHPLC for the isolation of alkaloids from crude raw material such as opium cake is demonstrated. In the opium cake, large amounts of hard vegetable particles and even sand corns are present together with the target alkaloids. Despite this, isolation by CHPLC of the desired compound was achieved in a single step by using a water/ethanol-based liquid. Isolation of alkaloids from such raw material normally requires a multistep procedure that includes the preparation of insoluble tartrate or picrate complex and this process includes dissolving the substance in flammable organic liquid. The isolation described here was performed in a single step by using the water/ethanol-based liquid.