Council of Scientific and Industrial Research

Kiran Lata Singh

Sushil Kumar

Atul Prakash Kahol

Sudeep Tandon

The invention relates to a novel process for the isolation of a hepatoprotective agent Silymarin from the seeds of the plant,comprising (i) Precooling the seeds to (&minus;) 20&deg; C. for 24 hours in a deep freezer/cold room. (ii) Powdering the cooled seeds in a hammer mill, fitted with about 40 mesh discharge screen. (iii) Defatting the seeds by extracting with hexane in a soxhlet type extractor to remove the total quantity of fatty oil without using a scrain. (iv) Extracting the defatted seeds with acetonitrile at 20-30&deg; C. to extract silymarin fraction. (v) Concentration of the sensitive silymarin fraction under vacuum in a agitated wiped thin film evaporator (vi) stirring the silymarin such dry powder with cold dichloromethane at 5&deg; C. followed by filtration and drying with a slow purge of nitrogen gas. (vii) Further purification of silymarin by suspending in 5 times its weight of acetonitrile and precipitating by 8-12 times its weight of water at 20&deg; C. (viii) Filtering the precipitated silymarin in a closed vacuum filter and having 1-2 &mgr;m screen washing the cake three times with distilled water (ix) Drying of Silymarin cake in vacuum oven to obtain substantially pure silymarin.

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Lucknow, India

Kiran Lata Singh