Isolation and purification of antioxidants from Styrax japonica Fruits

In order to study the antioxidative activity of the fruit of Styrax japonica which is widely grown in Korean wilderness, The fruit of Styrax japonica was extracted with methanol, and the solvent fractions were fractionated with hexane, chloroform, butanol, and distilled water to observe the antioxidant activity. In July, the Styrax japonica fruit that grows in the vicinity of Daejeon were dried , and 0.5 kg of dried fruits of were pulverized, after then refluxed with 1.5 L of methanol for 12 hours twice, and concentrated under reduced pressure to obtain 48 g of methanol extract. This fraction was suspended in distilled water, from fractionated with 800 mL of hexane, 800 mL of chloroform, and 800 mL of butanol respectively. the fractions were concentrated under reduced pressure to obtain 1 g, 3 g, 20 g and 23 g, respectively. The antioxidative activity of each fraction was measured by the DPPH radical scavenging activity method. As a result, the chloroform fraction showed the strongest radical scavenging activity of 73%. To investigate the antioxidative activity of chloroform, 1.29 g of chloroform fraction was added to ODS resin, and water and acetonatril were separated by polarity to obtain three kinds of pure lignan compounds (1, 2 and 3). Among the three compounds, DPPH radical scavenging ability of egonol was as high as 40.9%. However, the antioxidative activity of the fruit of Styrax japonica was not greater than extract in the pure state, thus the antioxidative activity of the Styrax japonica fruit is hardly regarded as a lignan compounds such as egonol. Therefore, Continuous study on antioxidant substances of Styrax japonica fruit is needed.