Reduce-Me
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Methylxanthine Extraction
I'm not entirely sure if this is the appropriate forum to post this question in. I saw the related posts about caffeine extraction, but I'm much more
interested in theophylline.
And I'm talking from giant amounts of raw material. In the kilogram ranges.
Hypothetically, if money and machines weren't an issue how would you go about it?
I kicked out HPLC as an idea because that isn't high enough throughput and the columns would be toasted fairly fast.
Unless their is a workhorse of an HPLC with some custom column that can hold ludicrous amounts of compound.
If somebody could give me a reference that would be swell, I'd be more than happy to trade or locate one for you. I just can't seem to find anything
about theophylline specifically.
Thanks in advance.
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Reduce-Me
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A little update:
I was thinking about fashioning a giant column chromatograph, although I have no idea how to go about it.
Ideally I would do an aqueous extraction of raw materials, then an organic extraction from that. Then run some through an HPLC to determine the peak I
needed for theophylline. .
After that, i would do an enormous scale up with some sort of giant pipe, a pump and whatever packing material. Would Silica Gel work?
I wouldn't know, I'm just a glorified molecular biologist at this point, prancing around as a biochemist.
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mnick12
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What are you planning on extracting theophylline from?
I personally have had trouble extracting any of the xanthine alkaloids from natural materials, the only exception was caffeine. I have seen some
pills containing thephylline for sale online. Why not buy some of those? While it may not be what you want, you would most certainly end up with more
theophylline than from an extraction.
Im not sure this is what your looking for but I assume you are interested in its bioactivity, http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/assay/assay.cgi?reqid=484890...
Good luck.
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Reduce-Me
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In the US it is a prescription drug and therefore not readily available. So, If I am "caught" with it, I am technically not in trouble, because under
DSHEA law it would be considered an extract of a food product. I'm really just seeing if I can muster usable amounts of non-synthesized compound.
[Edited on 24-8-2010 by Reduce-Me]
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DDTea
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I did such an extraction from black tea leaves as part of a senior project. I used reverse-phase HPLC with a mobile phase of Methanol and
Acetonitrile, if I recall correctly (which I probably don't) with UV/Vis + Fluorescence detection. I found the UV a lot more useful than the
Fluorescence, by the way. I don't remember what wavelength I used, but Caffeine's peak absorbance is at 273 nm. Again, going off memory,
theobromine, theophylline, and other adenine derivatives have very similar UV/Vis spectra.
In any case, it is pretty difficult. After doing multiple runs, resolution was poor. All the alkaloids appeared as a single peak.
I wish I still had my reference (or my write-up), but they were lost in a computer crash.
I really don't think this would work very well with a regular column chromatograph. Alternately, there's a really "dirty" way of separating some of
these things using TLC. Basically, run the solution as a normal TLC. When the compounds separate, scrape off the "dot" containing the compound of
interest and extract it from the stationary phase.
"In the end the proud scientist or philosopher who cannot be bothered to make his thought accessible has no choice but to retire to the heights in
which dwell the Great Misunderstood and the Great Ignored, there to rail in Olympic superiority at the folly of mankind." - Reginald Kapp.
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SWilkin676
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When doing extractions from plant materials it's sometimes best to head back in time before they learned to synthesize it.
Parmaceutical Journal
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