CAMAG HPTLC for Drug Discovery and Quality Control of Herbal, Complementary and Alternative Medicines from Natural Products
The CAMAG HPTLC system equipped with CAMAG Automatic TLC Sampler 4 (ATS4), CAMAG Automatic Development Chamber 2 (ADC2), CAMAG TLC Visualiser 2 and CAMAG HPTLC Software (VisionCATS) was purchased by the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMU).
High-Performance Thin-Layer Chromatography (HPTLC) is the most advanced form of TLC and comprises of the use of chromatographic layers of utmost separation efficiency and the employment of ‘hi-tech’ instrumentation for all steps in the procedure: precise sample application, standardised reproducible chromatogram development and software-controlled evaluation.
From Left to Right: Mr M Poka (Head of Pharmaceutical Sciences Department), Ms Taiwo Ajayi, Ms Rebotile Machika (M. Pharm students) and Dr K Bassey (Head of Pharmaceutical and Natural Products Chemistry Research)
HPTLC is an entire concept that includes a widely standardised methodology based on scientific facts as well as the use of validated methods for qualitative and quantitative analysis. HPTLC meets all quality requirements of today’s analytical labs, even in a fully regulated environment. As opposed to other separation techniques, the initial costs for an HPTLC system, as well as maintenance and costs per sample, are comparatively low.
The possibility of visual evaluation of separated samples on the plate is one of the most valuable aspects of TLC. It reaches a completely new dimension in HPTLC through the use of ‘state-of-the-art techniques for generating and evaluating digital images. The HPTLC system housed in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences laboratory of Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMU), will be used for routine analysis of:
- Medicinal plants fingerprinting, standardisation, identification of active ingredients and marker compounds and their quantitation, as well as generation of multivariate data for chemometrics computation
- Natural products research – identification of the purity of compounds isolated from plants and other natural products
- Herbal drug for their identification, stability, detection of adulterants, assay of marker compounds and their quantitation from raw materials
- Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) quality control, stability indicating test, identity and quality test, content uniformity test.
