Screening and identification of various components in Thalictrum fortunei using a combination of liquid chromatography/time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry.

An approach for screening and identification of various components in a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), using a combination of LC/TOF-MS technique was described in this paper. The chemical profile of Thalictrum fortunei, well-known in TCM, was studied using the established method. The possibilities of screening and identifying non-target components inside TCM with modern data acquisition methods of acceleration time of flight mass spectrometers, such as data-dependent MS to MS/MS switching were investigated. As a result, 27 components were identified. This study was aimed to screen and identify the main components of T. fortunei using LC/TOF-MS, expecting to provide a rapid, sensitive, economical and systematical method for the identification and further quality evaluation of TCM preparation.