Collection, extraction, fractionation and isolation of phytochemical constituents from leaves of acanthus ebracteatus / Ros Aimi Osman

Acanthus ebracteatus is well known as Thai medicinal plant. There were not much study has been carried out on this plant and very few articles were published on Acanthus ebracteatus. Acanthus ebracteatus was selected for this study due to its medicinal properties which have long been used as traditional folk medicine. This study was done to investigate the phytochemical constituents present in the leaves of Acanthus ebracteatus by collection, extraction, fractionation and isolation of the phytochemical constituents from the leaves of Acanthus ebracteatus leaves. Several steps were done in order to accomplish the objective. The first step was the collection of fresh leaves sample of Acanthus ebracteatus. Next step was preparing the crude extract by extracting the grinded leaves using four (4) different solvents with increasing polarity. After that, fractionation was done to crude extract of ethyl acetate extraction to separate compound(s) into different fractions. The fourth step was isolation of compound(s) from the fractions using Preparative Thin Layer Chromatography (PTLC). In this study, eerie sulphate was used as reagent. Compound(s) of interest was then subjected to purification to obtain only pure compound(s) without any impurities. The pure compound(s) obtained undergoes several test methods to identify its structure by using spectroscopic technique, which was Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer through 1H and 13C-NMR analysis. Three (3) compounds were successfully isolated from this study but identification of the compounds had not yet completed.