Determination of 44 major components and chemical profiling of saccharide in Chinese medicinal formula Lanqin Oral Liquid.

INTRODUCTION: Lanqin Oral Liquid (LQL) is a traditional Chinese medicine preparation (TCMP) containing five herbal medicines and has been commonly used for the treatment of pharyngitis and hand-foot-and-mouth disease in clinic. The material basis of LQL has been reported in our previous study, but the contents of the major components and the features of saccharide in LQL are still unclear. OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to establish accurate and rapid methods for the quantification of the major components and profiling of saccharide in LQL. The quantitative results combined with similarity evaluation were applied to improve the quality control of LQL. METHODOLOGY: An ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with triple-quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-QQQ-MS) method was utilised to determine 44 major components. Cosine similarity was used to evaluate the similarities among 20 batches of LQL based on the quantitative results of 44 major components. The physicochemical properties, structure, composition, and contents of saccharide in LQL were detected by a combination of chemical and instrumental analysis. RESULTS: A total of 44 compounds, including flavonoids, iridoid glycosides, alkaloids, and nucleosides, were accurately determined. The 20 batches of LQL were remarkably similar (> 0.95). In addition, d-glucose, galactose, d-glucuronic acid, arabinose, and d-mannose were detected in saccharide of LQL. The contents of saccharide in LQL were 13.52-21.09 mg/ml. CONCLUSIONS: The established methods can be applied for the comprehensive quality control of LQL, including characterisation of saccharide and quantification of representative components. Our study will provide a robust chemical foundation for disclosing the quality markers of its therapeutic effect.

A database-guided integrated strategy for comprehensive chemical profiling of traditional Chinese medicine.

A comprehensive chemical profiling of traditional Chinese medicine is the basic issue for further pharmacological research and quality assessment. To facilitate chemical identification and potential components discovery, the present study proposed an integrated identification strategy guided by a self-built component database constructed from literatures to carry out the global profiling of complex matrixes. Lanqin Oral Liquid was applied as example to validate the feasibility of this strategy. Based on LQL Component Database containing 710 compounds, modified MDF windows was established to extract the interested analogues, isoquinoline alkaloids, flavonoids and iridoid glycosides, according to their regular integral masses and mass defect. For compounds with characteristic substructures, such as quinic acids, crocins and some glycoside derivatives, the associated neutral losses and diagnostic fragment ions were collected to assist in profiling. Directly matching the m/z or formulas in database was proposed to components with limited regularity of accurate masses and substructures, like indole alkaloids, sesquiterpenes and some nucleosides. Eventually, 170 ions of 1038 precursor ions were identified or temporarily deduced, including 59 alkaloids, 36 flavonoids, 48 terpenoids, 24 organic acids and their derivatives, 2 oligosaccharides, and 1 lignans. Among them, 52 putative compounds were confirmed by chemical standards. The results indicated that the database-oriented identification strategy could locate potential components quickly and eliminate interfering ions, which have the potential for in-depth analysis of compounds.