Acetylcholinesterase (ACHE) and α-Glucosidase Inhibitory Assay by Effect-Directed Analysis on High Performance Thin-Layer Chromatography Coupled to Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

The traditional study of natural sources bioactivity is based on the evaluation of diverse biological activities like antioxidant or enzymes inhibition. For that, conventional methods involve the preparation of different polarities extracts, which are submitted to a various chemical and biological assays. If any extract shows some bioactivity, a large and time-consuming process begins. First, the extract composition is defined applying different types of chromatographic systems such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), high performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC), and gas chromatography (GC). Then, fractioning and purification processes are required to isolate as many compounds as possible employing special techniques like semi-preparative chromatography. All isolated groups or compounds are individually reevaluated in order to find which compound or family possess the biological activity. To shorten this process, some hyphenation methods that coupled analytical separation and bioassays have been developed, for example, HPTLC-bioassay coupled to mass spectrometry (MS).