Purification and chemical properties of anti-complementary polysaccharide from the leaves of Artemisia princeps.

The polysacchande fraction from the leaves of Artemisia princeps Pamp (Japanese name = Gaiyo) showed a potent anti-complementary activity. Two major active polysaccharides (AAF-IIb-2 and IIb-3) were purified by ion exchange chromatography on DEAESepharose, affinity chromatography on Ricinus communis-agglutinin conjugated Sepharose and gel filtration on Sephadex G-100 and Sepharose CL-4B. The molecular weights of AAF-IIb-2 and IIb-3 were found to be 139 000 and 31 000 by the calibration of gel filtration. AAFIIb-2 and IIb-3 were composed by rhamnose, xylose, arabinose, galactose and glucose in the molar ratios of 2.5 :2.5:4.3:3.6: 1.0 and 1.5:1.0:9.4:7.5:1.0, and also contained 59.4% and 49.0% galacturonic acid, respectively. AAF-IIb-2 was shown to have the more potent activity than AAF-IIb-3. Anti-complementary activity of AAFIIb-3 was almost similar with that of crude AR-arabinogalactan from the root of Angelica acutiloba Kitagawa, but AAF-IIb-2 and IIb-3 showed more potent activity than anti-complementary 3-glucan, lentinan.