Quantitative 1H NMR: Development and Potential of a Method for Natural Products Analysis

Abstract

Based on a brief revision of what constitutes state-of-the-art “quantitative experimental conditions” for ¹H quantitative NMR (qHNMR), this comprehensive review contains almost 200 references and covers the literature since 1982 with emphasis on natural products. It provides an overview of the background and applications of qHNMR in natural products research, new methods such as decoupling and hyphenation, and analytical potential and limitations, and compiles information on reference materials used for and studied by qHNMR. The dual status of natural products, being single chemical entities and valuable biologically active agents that need to be purified from complex matrixes, results in an increased analytical demand when testing their deviation from the singleton composition ideal. The outcome and versatility of reported applications lead to the conclusion that qHNMR is currently the principal analytical method to meet this demand. Considering both 1D and 2D ¹H NMR experiments, qHNMR has proved to be highly suitable for the simultaneous selective recognition and quantitative determination of metabolites in complex biological matrixes. This is manifested by the prior publication of over 80 reports on applications involving the quantitation of single natural products in plant extracts, dietary materials, and materials representing different metabolic stages of (micro)organisms. In summary, qHNMR has great potential as an analytical tool in both the discovery of new bioactive natural products and the field of metabolome analysis.