Analysis of the nucleoside content of Cordyceps sinensis using the stepwise gradient elution technique of thin-layer chromatography

Nucleoside is the main class of active components in Cordyceps sinensis. Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) is one of the most commonly used methods in pharmacopoeias for analyzing chemical components of herbal medicine. Since the isocratic elution method cannot be applied successfully in TLC analysis for separating all the nucleoside components, the stepwise gradient elution has been developed in this work to separate eight nucleoside standards with success. In this way, quantitative analyses of the samples of Cordyceps sinensis were achieved via the proposed TLC procedure coupled with the scanning densitometric techniques of CAMAG and TLCQA methods for qualitative and quantitative analysis.