Identification and characterisation of the Chinese herb Langdu by LC‐MS/MS analysis

Abstract

An LC-MS/MS method has been developed for the identification of three species of herb used as the traditional Chinese medicine Langdu, namely Stellera chamaejasme L., Euphorbia ebracteolata Hayata and E. fischeriana Steud. As these herbs contain different mixtures of marker compounds, they could be unambiguously differentiated from each other by comparing their respective characteristic segmental multiple reaction monitoring profiles. The profiles indicated that S. chamaejasme contained daphnetin, skimmetine, stellerin, chamaechromone and neochamaejasmin, E. fischeriana contained ebracteolata compound B, ingenol, jolkinolide B and fischeriana A, whilst E. ebracteolata contained ebracteolata compounds B and C along with ingenol. These results were confirmed from the respective MS/MS spectra. The method has been successfully applied to differentiate these herbs from the related species Alocasia macrorrhiza (L.) Schott and E. kansui Liou.

Ultra‐high performance liquid chromatography with linear ion trap‐Orbitrap hybrid mass spectrometry combined with a systematic strategy based on fragment ions for the rapid separation and characterization of components in Stellera chamaejasme extracts

“…Zhao et al [5] detected 22 isolated chromatography peaks in the total ion current chromatogram (TIC) and nine of them were characterized by RPLC-DAD tandem ESI-Q-TOF-MS. And because of the unavailability of commercial reference standards and the lack of multi-grade fragmentation ability of Q-TOF instrument, diterpenes could not be identified and the reliability of identification results which only based on the accurate molecular weights was doubtable in some degree. Su et al [6] characterized and compared the chemical constitutes of three Chinese herbs "Langdu" (Stellera chamaejasme, Euphorbia fischeriana, and Euphorbia ebracteolata) by LC-MS/MS analysis, but this investigation mainly focused on developing the analytical strategy in the light of respective makers for differentiating these three herbs from the related species. In addition to that, no related literature about the characterization of chemical components in S. chamaejasme depicted the systematic MS n fragmentation patterns of different types of compounds and inferred some unknown ingredients on the basis of mass fragmentation of reference compounds.…”

Characterization of constituents in Stellera chamaejasme L. by rapid‐resolution liquid chromatography–diode array detection and electrospray ionization time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry

“…Mass spectrometric techniques have been widely used for identification of traditional Chinese herbal medicines, because of their high sensitivity and fast screening capabilities in detecting target compounds in complex systems. Su et al reported that 10 compounds from the three species of Langdu were identified by LC-MS/MS (Su et al, 2003), but multiple constituents in the root of Stellera chamaejasme L. have not been defined. Accurate mass measurement, such as TOF/MS, greatly increases the confidence of identification because it inherently limits the possible number of candidate compounds; the better precision and accuracy of the mass measurement, the fewer compounds will be theoretically possible.…”

Determination of chamaechromone in rat plasma by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry: Application to pharmacokinetic study

“…It was reported that biflavonoids had anti-inflammatory, antiviral, cytotoxic, and antioxidative activity [5][6][7]. Chamaechromone, a biflavone constituent, was a major component in dried roots of S. chamaejasme [8], and it was found that it showed anti-HBV effect against HBsAg secretion [9].…”

“…Most of them were based on liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) [8], rapid-resolution liquid chromatography-diode array detection (RRLC-DAD) and electrospray ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (ESI-TOF/MS) [10], high performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection (HPLC-UV) [11], highresolution ESMS [11] and NMR spectrometry [11,12] for detection and identification of the constituents. Until now, no method has been reported on pharmacokinetic study.…”