Natural resinous materials are mainly composed of pentacyclic triterpenes which exhibit a large number of interesting medicinal activities. However, the presence of numerous isomers within the active substances makes their screening by HPLC very challenging. Porous graphitic carbon was investigated as stationary phase to achieve triterpenes isomers separation. The influence of various parameters (temperature, formic acid concentration and mobile phase composition) on the retention was considered. A usual decrease of the retention of triterpenes was observed with the increase of the temperature. Therefore, separation in resinous materials was performed at 25°C. Acetonitrile-isopropanol mixture was chosen as mobile phase in gradient elution and leads to the best compromise between efficiency and high resolution. The lack of chromophore groups in the pentacyclic triterpenes structures required the use of mass spectrometry detection. Moreover, atmospheric pressure photo-ionisation mass spectrometry prevents compounds fragmentation which was helpful for spectra interpretation and compounds identification.
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