Multidimensional preparative liquid chromatography to isolate flavonoids from bergamot juice and evaluation of their anti-inflammatory potential.

Important objectives of a high-performance liquid chromatography preparative process are: purity of products isolated, yield and throughput. The liquid chromatography multidimensional preparative method used in this work was developed mainly to increase the throughput; moreover purity and yield are increased thanks to the automated collection of the molecules based on the intensity of a signal generated from the mass spectrometer detector, in this way only a specific product can be targeted. This preparative system allowed, in few analyses both in the first and second dimensions, the isolation of eight pure compounds present at very different concentration in the original sample with high purity (>95%) and yield, which showed how the system is efficient and versatile. Pure molecules were used to validate the analytical method and to test the anti-inflammatory and antiproliferative potential of flavonoids. The contemporary presence, in bergamot juice, of all the flavonoids together increases the anti-inflammatory effect with respect to the single compounds alone.