Our groups provide a broad range of solutions for natural product (NP) isolation and analysis to academic institutions and to pharmaceutical industries. We offer state-of-the-art tools, extensive know-how, and flexible capacity to provide services for analysis, isolation and biological testing of natural products.

With the miniaturized hit discovery platform, we provide the isolation, structure identification and biological testing of secondary metabolites from complex mixtures in the microgram range.

Contact information

microflow NMR platform (+)

Solutions

1. Biological screening
2. Chemical screening and dereplication
3. Isolation and structure elucidation
4. Quality control of phytopharmaceuticals and purified NPs
5. Metabolomic studies

1. Biological screening

• cancer chemopreventive assays (HDAC, Quinone Reductase, NO, NF-κB, 96 well plate)
• cytotoxicity (cancer cells, primary cells, 96 well plate)
• β-hematin (96 well plate)
• α-/β-glucosidase (TLC)
• acetylcholinesterase activity (TLC)
• antioxidant activity (DPPH, TLC)

2. Chemical screening and dereplication

• HPTLC, HPLC and UHPLC profiling of crude extracts
• dereplication by means of
  • LC-MS and LC-MSⁿ profiling
  • UHPLC-TOF/MS profiling
• metabolite identification by search in
  • Dictionnary of Natural Products (Chapman&Hall)
  • Beilstein
  • in-house NMR database
• de novo identification based on microisolation and microflow NMR

3. Isolation and structure elucidation

Isolation can be performed at large and at microgram scale using a combination of diverse chromatographic techniques.

• automated flash chromatography with different phases
• semi-preparative chromatography (HPLC semi-prep)
• medium pressure chromatography (MPLC)
• low pressure chromatography (LPLC)
• centrifugal partition chromatography (CPC)
• open column chromatography with various phases (CC)

4. Quality control of phytopharmaceuticals or purified NPs

• extract profiling / fingerprinting
• quantitative determination of active compounds (standardization)
• trace analysis of toxic natural products / adulterants

5. Metabolomic studies of complexe mixtures

• LC/MS fingerprinting
• NMR fingerprinting
• classification/discrimination of spectroscopic datasets
• determination of biomarkers

Techniques

Chromatography

• high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC)
  •  automatic TLC Sampler 4: Camag
  • automatic developing chamber (ADC 2): Camag
  • TLC Scanner 3: Camag
  • diverse TLC reagents
• high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC): 1100 Binary pumps Agilent^®
  • reverse phase chromatograpy
  • normal phase chromatograpy
• size exclusion chromatography (gel filtration)
• ultrahigh pressure liquid chromatography (UHPLC): Acquity® Waters^®
• semi-preparative liquid chromatography (semi-prep): Shimadzu^®, Varian^®, Gilson^®
• flash chromatography: Armen^®
• medium pressure liquid chromatography: Büchi^®
• low pressure liquid chromatography
• centrifugal partition chromatography (CPC, Quattro CCC™): Lab Prep
• counter current chromatography (HSCCC-TBE 300 B): Tauto

Mass spectrometry

• mass spectrometry time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOF/MS): LCT Premier^® Waters^®
• quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry (Q-MS): Quattro micro^® Waters^®
• iontrap tandem mass spectrometry (IT-MSn): LQC^® ThermoFisher^®

Hyphenation of HPLC and UHPLC

HPLC and UHPLC are hyphenated with various detectors as

• light scattering detector (ELSD): Sedere^®
• UV detectors (DAD)
• mass spectrometers (IT-MS, Q-MS and TOF/MS)

NMR spectroscopy

• Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR): Unity Inova^® 500 MHz Varian^®
  • dual Probe 1H{13C} : Varian^®
  • microflow Probe 1H{13C}/2H lock (CapNMR™): Protasis^®
  • NMR automation One-Minute NMR: Protasis^® (Liquid handler : CTC^®)

Contact

Please contact Prof. Jean-Luc Wolfender (chemical analysis) or Prof. Muriel Cuendet (biological testing) for questions and requests concerning our services.