Green extraction of Commiphora leptophloeos Mart. – J. B. Gillett aiming to increase the content of hinokinin, an “emerging bioactive”

Hinokinin is a lignan considered an “emerging bioactive” by several therapeutic effects. Thus, this study aimed to develop a method of extraction of hinokinin from the dried bark of the Commiphora leptophloeos Mart. – J. B. Gillett, using the extractor EDGE® and analyzes by GC-MS. Four solvents (hexane, dichloromethane, ethyl acetate, and ethanol) were used in the first part of the work in conditions of 80 °C and 5 min of hold time. Of these, ethanol presented a better yield (7.4%) in total extract and %hinokinin in the relative area (58.5%). Central Composite Design using ethanol, ranging the temperature (51.7–108 °C), and the hold time (from 1.5 to 8.5 min) was carried out. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed statistical significance for the temperature parameter, where the linear and quadratic factors were significant for the hinokinin GC-MS response, while the linear factor was significant for the mass yield. Thus, the better hold time and temperature were 6.85 min and 108 °C, respectively, increasing the mass yield from 6.4% to 17.9%, and the hinokinin content, estimated by the ratio hinokinin/Internal standard increased from 6.7 to 11.1. Therefore, the EDGE® method demonstrated good efficiency in the extraction, as well as the use of small sample quantities (2 g), green solvent, low extraction time, and few sample manipulations.