Bioactive Compounds from Theobroma cacao: Effect of Isolation and Safety Evaluation

• Published in: Plant foods for human nutrition (Dordrecht) 2019-03, Vol.74 (1), p.40-46
• Main Authors: de la Luz Cádiz-Gurrea, María, Fernández de las Nieves, Ignacio, Aguilera Saez, Luis Manuel, Fernández-Arroyo, Salvador, Legeai-Mallet, Laurence, Bouaziz, Mohamed, Segura-Carretero, Antonio
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antiinfectives and antibacterials; Bioactive compounds; Biocompatibility; Biological activity; Cacao - chemistry; Carcinogens; Catechin; Chemical compounds; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Chemistry/Food Science; Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; Cocoa; Cytotoxicity; Ecology; Flavanols; Flavonoids; Flavonoids - isolation & purification; Flavonoids - toxicity; Food plants; Food Safety; Food Science; Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points; High performance liquid chromatography; Humans; Inflammation; Ions; Liquid chromatography; Mass spectrometry; Mass spectroscopy; Membranes; Microorganisms; Monomers; Nutrition; Oligomers; Organic chemistry; Original Paper; Phenolic compounds; Phenols; Phytochemicals - isolation & purification; Phytochemicals - toxicity; Plant Physiology; Plants (botany); Polyphenols; Polyphenols - isolation & purification; Polyphenols - toxicity; Pore size; Porosity; Proanthocyanidins - isolation & purification; Proanthocyanidins - toxicity; Procyanidins; Solid Phase Extraction - methods; Solid phases; Spectrometry, Mass, Electrospray Ionization; Theobroma cacao; Toxicity testing
• ISSN: 0921-9668; 1573-9104
• DOI: 10.1007/s11130-018-0694-x

Plants, including most food and feed plants, produce a broad range of bioactive chemical compounds. Among these compounds, polyphenols are reported to provide beneficial effects as anti-carcinogenic, anti-atherogenic, anti-inflammatory, immune modulating, anti-microbial, vasodilatory and analgesic. Cocoa ( Theobroma cacao ), a major, economically important, international crop, has been related to several nutritional benefits, which have been associated with the phenolic fraction. The main subclass of flavonoids found in cocoa is flavanols, particularly (epi)catechins monomers, and their oligomers, also known as procyanidins. In this study, these compounds were isolated by different methodologies as solid phase extraction (SPE), semi-preparative high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and membrane technologies to obtain different polyphenolic profiles by HPLC coupled to electrospray time-of-flight mass spectrometry (ESI-TOF-MS) and to test their cytotoxicity. Finally, different polyphenolic profiles were collected, where the combination of both semi-preparative HPLC and SPE technologies provided the most purified fractions. Filtration with membranes and SPE provide extracts with different composition depending on the pore size of membranes and on the solvent, respectively. In addition, the results of toxicity assay indicated low levels in all fractions.