Comprehensive Quality Assessment of Kaixin Powder by HPLC–DAD Quantification and HPLC–QTOF-MS/MS Confirmation

Abstract

Kaixin Powder (KXP) is a classic formula for treating morbid forgetfulness in ancient China. To guarantee the efficacy and safety of KXP, a simple and accurate HPLC–DAD method has been established and validated for the quantitative analysis of seven bioactive compounds in KXP. Dehydrotumulosic acid (DTU) and dehydrotrametenolic acid (DTR) were quantified in KXP for the first time. Good chromatographic separation was conducted on a Kromasil 100-5 C 18 column (250 mm × 4.6 mm, 5 μm) by gradient elution using mobile phases containing acetonitrile and 0.1% formic acid aqueous solution at different detection wavelengths. The calibration curves of each compound showed good linearity ( r ≥ 0.9990), and the LOD and LOQ were in the ranges of 0.01–0.10 and 0.03–0.40 μg/mL, respectively. The relative standard deviations (RSDs) of intra-day and inter-day precisions were in the ranges of 0.45–1.74% and 0.56–2.32%, respectively. All recoveries were in the range of 93.6–105.5% with an RSD no more than 2.77%. These quantification results of seven compounds determined in the samples were further confirmed by HPLC–QTOF-MS/MS. This study provides a useful and simple method for analyzing the major bioactive compounds and improves the quality assessment research of KXP.

Multi-omics approaches for in-depth understanding of therapeutic mechanism for Traditional Chinese Medicine

“…They have found several bioactive compounds: ginsenosides, 3,6′disinapoyl sucrose, α/β-asarone, and pachymic acid for Ginseng Radix et Rhizoma, Polygalae Radix, Acori Tatarinowii Rhizoma, and Poria in KXP based on LC-MS, respectively (Zhu et al, 2010). Apart from these five compounds, Wang et al (2021), have firstly found two novel bioactive compounds of KXP (dehydrotrametenolic and dehydrotumulosic acids) from KXP using HPLC-DAD and HPLC-QTOF-MS/MS. These efforts have also resulted in the widespread use of chromatographic methods for TCM formula quality assessment (Liu et al, 2016b;Fan et al, 2021;Zeng et al, 2021).…”

“…Network pharmacology analysis is presented to clarify which compounds of TCM formula exert effects in treating diseases and which targets could be exploited for drug design (Boezio et al, 2017;Wu et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2019b), which has developed into a powerful method for leveraging the "ingredients-compounds-proteins/genesdiseases" network for TCM research (Zhang et al, 2019b;Yang et al, 2022). Multi-omics such as transcriptomics, genomics, epigenomics, and proteomics could be used to determine the ingredients, proteins, and/or genes of TCM formulas, whereas electrochemical method, HPLC, real-time qPCR, and other quantified methods can be used to determine and quantify the content of bioactive compounds (Wolfender et al, 2003;Zhu et al, 2010;Wang et al, 2021). While network pharmacology analysis could facilitate the integration of ingredients, bioactive compounds, and proteins/ genes into a network, providing an effective resolution for exploring the TCM-disease interaction (Zhang et al, 2019b).…”

Constituents, pharmacological activities, pharmacokinetic studies, clinical applications, and safety profile on the classical prescription Kaixinsan

“…The basic feature of TCM is that it consists in the form of preparation and formulation by the guidance of compatibility rules, different herbs are usually orchestrated to form a multi-herbs combination. A classical prescription generally contains primary (called “Jun” or “Emperor”) and adjuvant herbs (called “Chen, Zuo, and Shi”) according to the therapeutic characteristics of TCM, and the latter function as “Assistant”, “Vassal” and “Delivery servant” which are generally worked as assistants to increase efficiency, enhance the synergistic effect or to facilitate the delivery of the emperor medicine ( Wang et al, 2021a ). In the TCM system, the incorporation of a “Delivery servant” into classical prescription is an important compatibility mechanism to support the transportation from the effective constituents to the target organ in treating diseases ( Wei et al, 2018 ).…”