Rapid determination of bioactive compounds in the different organs of Salvia Miltiorrhiza by UPLC-MS/MS.

Salvia miltiorrhiza has been widely used in Asia for medicinal purposes for >1000 years due to the high levels of bioactive constituents it contains. In this study, a simple and rapid ultrasound-assisted liquid extraction (5 min) was applied for the extraction of these bioactive constituents. The extracts were analyzed by using rapid ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) with simultaneous positive and negative electrospray ionization in a single analytical run. Eight analytes were separated within 2.2 min during 6 min of run time with UHPLC-MS/MS operated in multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. The concentration of salvianolic acids and tanshinones in the different organs of different varieties of Salvia miltiorrhiza ranged from 6.4 to 382.1 mg/g and 0.03 to 31.7 mg/g, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report to characterize the tanshinone compounds found in the flower and stem/leaf of Salvia miltiorrhiza by UHPLC-MS/MS.

A rapid, simple, and high-throughput UPLC-MS/MS method for simultaneous determination of bioactive constituents in Salvia miltiorrhiza with positive/negative ionization switching.

The dried root of Danshen (Salvia miltiorrhiza) is a Chinese medicine that has been used in traditional treatments for more than 2000 years in Asia. It has also been used to treat cardiovascular diseases for decades. The goal of this study was to develop a new, fast, and simple ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) analytical method for the analysis of phenolic acids and tanshinones in Danshen. The samples were separated on a Kinetex F5 column (2.1 x 100 mm, 1.7 µm, pentafluorophenyl) using 78% acetonitrile with 0.1% formic acid as the mobile phase with isocratic elution while the flow rate was set at 0.45 mL/min. The analysis was performed in a Waters Xevo TQ mass spectrometer via multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) in polarity switching mode. The linearity values of the calibration curves of eight compounds were in the range from 3 to 3200 ng/mL (r2 > 0.99). Method validation was performed in terms of linearity, the relative standard deviations (RSDs) of the intra-day and inter-day, and it was found that precisions were within 15% and the accuracy ranged from 93% to 118%. The recovery was more than 87%. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) values of the eight analytes varied between 0.023 to 0.75 ng/mL and 0.375 to 1.5 ng/mL, respectively. This approach has the shortest analysis time for the separation of phenolic acids and tanshinones in Danshen using a UPLC core-shell column with F5 stationary phase. Meanwhile, this robust and high-throughput method not only has a short run time (2 min) but also reduce the consumption of organic solvents.