Determination of dissociation constants of pharmacologically active xanthones by capillary zone electrophoresis with diode array detection

In this article, the dissociation constants (pKa) of 10 pharmacologically active xanthones isolated from herbal medicine Securidaca inappendiculata were determined by capillary zone electrophoresis with diode array detection. The pKa values determined by the method based on the electrophoretic mobilities (calculated from migration times) have been proved by the method based on UV absorbance calculated from the online spectra corresponding peaks. No conspicuous difference was observed between the two methods with acceptable reproducibility. Two pKa values (pKa1 and pKa2) were found for four xanthones while generally the 10 compounds possess the pKa values ranging from 6.4 to 9.2.