Purification of Two Taxanes from Taxus cuspidata by Preparative High-Performance Liquid Chromatography

In the present study, an effective method of preparative high-performance liquid chromatography (Prep-HPLC) was established to purify two taxanes in Taxus cuspidata. During the experimental operation, the effects of flow rate, injection volume, and column temperature on the purity of 10-deacetyltaxol (10-DAT) and paclitaxel (PTX) were investigated, and the optimized conditions were as follows: flow rate of 10 mL/min, injection volume of 0.5 mL, and column temperature of 30 °C. Under these conditions, the purity of 10-DAT and PTX reached 95.33% and 99.15%, respectively. The purified products were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and electrospray ionization-high resolution mass spectrometry (ESI-HRMS). The results demonstrated that preparative HPLC can effectively purify 10-DAT and PTX from Taxus cuspidata with a purity of >95%, which was suitable for the large-scale preparation of 10-DAT and PTX.