Anxiolytic Activity of a Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Extract of Souroubea sympetaly (Marcgraviaceae); Martha Mullally, Kari Kramp, Chris Cayer, Ammar Saleem, Fida Ahmed, Calum McRae, John Baker, Andrew Goulah, Marco Otorola, Pablo Sanchez, Mario Garcia, Luis Poveda, Zul Merali, Tony Durst, Vance L. Trudeau, and John Thor Arnason1
Anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety, panic disorders and phobias, are a detrimental form of mental illness that impacts an estimated 16% of people across the world and are commonly comorbid with other mental illnesses, including depression, bipolar disorder and addiction
A research team from the University of Ottawa, Bioniche Life Sciences Inc., Loyalist College, and Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica developed an extraction technique to yield a botulinic acid-(BA) enriched extract of the traditional anti-anxiety plant Souroubea sympetaly Gilg (Marcgraviaceae). Five extraction techniques were compared: supercritical carbon dioxide extraction (SCE), conventional solvent extraction with ethyl acetate (EtOAc), accelerated solvent extraction (ASE), ultrasonic assisted extraction (UAE) and soxhlet extraction (Sox). The EtOAc and SCE extraction methods resulted in BA-enriched extracts, with BA concentrations of 6.78 +/-0.2 and 5.54 +/- 0.2 mg/g extract, respectively, as determined by HPLC-APCI-MS.
The sc-CO2 extractions were performed with an SFT-250 extractor equipped with a 100 mL vessel (Supercritical Fluid Tech., Newark, DE). Samples (20 g) were extracted at 80°C, 600 bar (60 MPa), with a flow rate of 3 L/min until 450 g volume of CO2 was consumed (25:1 solvent-biomass). The extraction efficiency was monitored at 20 min intervals. High density conditions (80°C, 60 MPa, 0.9–0.925 g/mL CO2 density) were chosen to ensure increased solubility of BA and increased extraction efficiency. In preliminary trials, these conditions resulted in high BA yields compared with the EtOAc, extracts that had the highest yield of BA, so these conditions were used throughout the experiment.
The SFT-250 SFE is capable of operating with sample vessels from 100m – 5000ml and is a moderately priced laboratory/pilot scale SFE unit, covering the full range of temperatures and pressures that are required by most supercritical extraction applications.
References:
1. Anxiolytic Activity of a Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Extract of Souroubea sympetaly (Marcgraviaceae); Martha Mullally, Kari Kramp, Chris Cayer, Ammar Saleem, Fida Ahmed, Calum McRae, John Baker, Andrew Goulah, Marco Otorola, Pablo Sanchez, Mario Garcia, Luis Poveda, Zul Merali, Tony Durst, Vance L. Trudeau, and John Thor Arnason. PHYTOTHERAPY RESEARCH Phytother. Res. 25: 264–270 (2011) Published online 21 July 2010 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/ptr.3246