SCIENCE CHINA Chemistry © Science China Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011 chem.scichina.com www.springerlink.com †Contributed equally to this work. *Corresponding author (email: luwl@bjmu.edu.cn)  ARTICLES  July 2012 Vol.55 No.7: 1435–1444 doi: 10.1007/s11426-011-4471-z Separation of injectable salidroside by column chromatography of macroporous resins for treating myocardial ischemia JU RuiJun 1† , HUANG RenJie 2† , ZHOU Jia 1 , LI RuoJing 1 , ZHOU Peng 1 , ZHANG ZaoHua 3 , XIANG FeiJun 4 , XU DongJin 4 , LIU WeiXiang 4 , MA XingTian 4 , ZHANG Qiang 1 & LU WanLiang 1* 1 State Key Laboratory of Natural and Biomimetic Drugs; School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China 2 Department of Pharmacy, Fujian Health College, Fuzhou 350101, China 3 China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China 4 Kangmei Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Puning 515300, China Received August 11, 2011; accepted November 9, 2011; published online December 1, 2011 The objective of the present study is to develop a method for large-scale separating and purifying salidroside from rhodiola kirilowii roots and for preparing injectable medicinal ingredient. Crude extract of salidroside was prepared by water-ethanol system, and purified by column chromatography of macroporous resins. Static adsorption and desorption studies were per- formed on six kinds of macroporous resins, and SP825 resin was chosen, followed by optimizing process parameters. The op- timum sample volume, feed concentration, ratio of diameter to height, and feeding flow rate were 1.5 bed volumes (BV), 15 mg/mL, 1:10 and 1 BV/h, respectively. Dynamic desorption was performed consecutively with 8 BV of distilled water, 3 BV of 5% ethanol and 8 BV of 10% ethanol at a flow rate of 2 BV/h. After three cycles in separating 3.5 tons of rhodiola kirilowii roots, salidroside purity was increased from 3.4% in the crude extract to 93.6% in purified salidroside product. This study pro- vides a novel method to separate salidroside for injectable use. large-scale separation, salidroside, marcroporous resin, rhodiola kirilowii, injectable ingredient, HPLC 1 Introduction Rhodiola kirilowii is a perennial herbal plant which belongs to rhodiola species of crassulaceae family. There are about 90 species of rhodiola around the world, mainly distributed in alpine zones of the northern hemisphere. In China, ap- proximate 70 kinds of rhodiola plants are found in the southwest, northwest and northeast mountains [1]. Medici- nal rhodiola is mainly divided into four species, including rhodiola crenulata (dahua), rhodiola sachdlinensis (gaoshan), rhodiola kirilowii (dazhu) and rhodiola ahada var tangutica (tanggute). Known as plateau ginseng, the roots of rhodiola have been used orally as medicinal parts. To date, about 140 chemical compounds have been extracted and separated from rhodiola plants, including glucoside, coumarin, naph- tha, fat, protein, organic acids [2, 3], and bioactive trace elements (calcium, magnesium, iron, lead, zinc, silver, co- balt, cadmium, molybdenum and titanium) [4]. As a medic- inal plant, rhodiola crenulata has been collected in China Pharmacopoeia from 1977 edition to 2010 edition. Fur- thermore, an injection of rhodiola kirilowii extract (low purity of salidroside) has been approved in clinical therapy by State Food and Drug Administration of China. Salidroside exists in both rhodiola crenulata and rhodio- la kirilowii, and shows efficacy in treating various diseases,