Quality Control of Herbal Material and Phytopharmaceuticals with MS and NMR Based Metabolic Fingerprinting

Abstract

Introduction !Plants have been used throughout history as the primary source of food, timber, fuel, and medicine, among other purposes. Due to their amazing ability to produce a vast structural array of chemical components, of which only relatively few have been identified, plants are one of the most important sources for the development of new drugs. Today plants, plant extracts and plant-derived components are being used in a multitude of herbal remedies and phytopharmaceuticals. Well-known plants which are used to treat specific diseases include Artemisia annua (to treat uncomplicated malaria) [1] and the female flowering tops of Cannabis sativa (to relieve pain and as an appetite enhancer) [2]. A multitude of examples exists for the use of plant extracts to treat a large array of diseases and the WHO estimates that about 80% of the world population uses medicinal plants as their primary source of medication. Many well-known drugs have also been isolated from plants including artemisinin from A. annua, paclitaxel from Taxus brevifolia, vinblastine and vincristine from Catharanthus roseus and galanthamine from the Amaryllidaceae family. In the literature three terms are used to describe the analysis of metabolites produced by plants.These terms, notably metabolic profiling, metabolic fingerprinting and metabolomics are sometimes used interchangeably. It is not our intention to give a formal definition of metabolomics. For a formal definition and discussion [3,4] should be consulted. A very simplistic view is that metabolomics can be seen in two different ways. Firstly there is the microscopic view (targeted approach) which looks at a specific set of compounds (e.g., phenolics or terpenoids, etc). This approach is also called metabolic fingerprinting or metabolic profiling. The second view is the macroscopic view (untargeted approach) which aims at identifying and quantifying all the metabolites present in a specific organism [3]. Metabolomics is therefore a "systematic study of the unique chemical fingerprints that specific cellular processes leave behind" -and, more specifically, the study of their small-molecule metabolite profiles [5]. The metabolome represents the collection of all metabolites in a biological organism, which are the end products of its gene expression. Thus, while mRNA gene expression data and proteomic analyses do not tell the whole story of what might be happening in a cell, metabolic fingerprinting can give an instantaneous snapshot of the physiology of that cell. One of the challenges of systems biology is to integrate proteomic, transcriptomic, and Abstract !Metabolic fingerprinting techniques have received a lot of attention in recent years and the annual amount of publications in this field has increased significantly over the past decade. This increase in publications is due to improvements in the analytical performance, most notably in the field of NMR and MS analysis, and the increased awareness of the different applications of this growing field. Metabolomic fingerprinting or pr...

The pharmaceutical industry and natural products: historical status and new trends

“…In order to safeguard a continuous and approvable therapeutic effect the chemical composition of such multifaceted plant-based NP extracts has to be authenticated. Standardization procedures currently exist and are based on the quantification of the active principle(s) (when they are known), the detection of chemical marker(s) for assessing the correct botanical origin of the plant material, the acquisition of the complete metabolite profile (metabolome) and a comprehensive estimation of the biological variability of the extracts (van der Kooy et al 2009). In addition, depending on the nature of the plant material used, various analytical validations have to be performed to ensure the absence of toxic or allergenic compounds .…”

The emergence of metabolomics as a key discipline in the drug discovery process

“…More particularly in the pharmaceutical field, metabolomic techniques and applications find scope from drug discovery to clinical development of new medicines. This includes target identification and validation, elucidation of the mechanisms of action of drugs, lead identification [9,10], identification of drug efficacy or pathology biomarkers [11][12][13], toxicological analysis by identification of safety biomarkers [14][15][16] but also quality control, particularly of medicinal plants [17,18] and bioactive drug discovery from natural sources [19] .…”

Rapid Isolation of the Bioactive Metabolite of Cymbopogon Proximus and Development of Lc Method

“…Most times the herbal products are introduced into the market with no suitable analytical evaluation. Consumers can buy such products without a physician's prescription and no one can determine the potential hazards in a lower grade product [2,3].…”