[Chemical constituents and anti-liver fibrosis mechanism of Meconopsis quintuplinervia based on UPLC-Q-Exactive-MS/MS and network pharmacology].

In this study, UPLC-Q-Exactive-MS/MS was used to rapidly analyze the chemical constituents of Meconopsis quintupli-nervia, and the anti-liver fibrosis mechanism of M. quintuplinervia was preliminarily analyzed by network pharmacology, molecular docking, and cell experiments. The chemical constituents of M. quintuplinervia were identified according to the information of MS~1 and MS~2, as well as the data in the literature and databases. SwissTargetPrediction and TargetNet were used to predict the potential targets. The targets related to liver fibrosis were collected from GeneCards and OMIM. The protein-protein interaction(PPI) network was constructed by STRING. Cytoscape 3.6.1 was used to construct and analyze the "constituent-target-disease" network to obtain key targets and their corresponding constituents in the network. DAVID 6.8 was used for GO analysis and KEGG signaling pathway enrichment analysis. Finally, the preliminary verification was carried out by molecular docking and cell experiments. As a result, 106 chemical constituents were identified from M. quintuplinervia, including 66 flavonoids, 16 alkaloids, 18 phenolic acids, 1 anthocyanin, and 5 other constituents. Among them, 3 constituents were identified as potential new compounds, and 59 constituents were reported in M. quintuplinervia for the first time. Network pharmacology analysis showed that M. quintuplinervia presumably acted on AKT1, SRC, JUN, EGFR, STAT3, HSP90 AA1, MAPK3, and other core targets through luteolin, isorhamnetin, quercetin, apigenin, kaempferide, amurine, 2-methylflavinantine, allocryptopine, the multi and other active compounds, thereby regulating the PI3 K/AKT signaling pathway, pathways in cancer, proteoglycans in cancer, FoxO signaling pathway, and other pathways to exert anti-liver fibrosis effects. M. quintuplinervia extract(MQE) could significantly down-regulate PI3 K and AKT protein levels in the HSC-T6 cell model induced by TGF-ß1, suggesting that MQE may have the ability to regulate the PI3 K/AKT signaling pathway. The findings of this study indicated that the anti-liver fibrosis effect of M. quintuplinervia had multi-constituent, multi-target, and multi-pathway characteristics, which may provide a scientific basis for the research on the pharmacodynamic materials, action mechanism, and quality markers of M. quintupli-nervia.

Identification of flavonoid glycosides in Rosa chinensis flowers by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry in combination with ¹³C nuclear magnetic resonance.

Flowers of Rosa chinensis are widely used in traditional Chinese medicine as well as in food industry. Flavonoid glycosides are believed to be the major components in R. chinensis that are responsible for its antioxidant activities. In this work, a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) method was developed for analysis of flavonoid glycosides presented in ethyl acetate extract of dried R. chinensis flowers. Twelve flavonoid glycosides were separated and detected. By comparing the retention times, UV spectra, and tandem MS fragments with those of respective authentic compounds, eight flavonoid glycosides were unequivocally identified. Although the other four were also identified as flavonoid glycosides, the glycosylation positions could not be determined due to lack of authentic compounds. Fortunately, the glycosylation effects were clearly observed in the (13)C NMR spectrum of the extract. The detailed structural information was, therefore, obtained to identify the four flavonoid glycosides as quercetin-3-O-D-glucoside, quercetin-3-O-D-xyloside, kaempferol-3-O-D-xyloside and quercetin-3-O-D-(6″-coumaroyl)-galactoside. These flavonoid glycosides were detected and identified for the first time in this botanic material. This work reports on the first use of (13)C NMR of a mixture to enhance a rapid HPLC-MS/MS analysis. The proposed analytical protocol was validated with a mixture of authentic flavonoid glycosides.