MS‐based metabolite analysis of two licorice chalcones in mice plasma, bile, feces, and urine after oral administration

Abstract

Isoliquiritigenin (ILG) and isoliquiritin (ILQ), two kinds of major flavonoids in licorice, are biological active substances with antioxidant, anti‐inflammatory, and tumor‐suppressive effects. However, their in vivo metabolites, possible material basis of this two licorice chalcones for the treatment of diseases, have not been studied completely. To determine the metabolism of ILG and ILQ, after oral administration of 100 mg/kg/day of these compounds for consecutive 8 days, the metabolites of these two licorice chalcones in mice plasma, urine, feces, and bile were determined using liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole/time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry in this study. The structures of those metabolites were tentatively identified according to their fragment pathways, accurate masses, characteristic product ions, metabolism law, and reference standards‐matching. As a result, a total of 25 and 29 metabolites of ILG and ILQ were identified, respectively. Seven main metabolic pathways, oxidation and reduction, deglycosylation and glycosylation, dehydroxylation and hydroxylation, demethoxylation and methoxylation, acetylation, glucuronidation, and sulfation, were summarized to tentatively explain how the metabolites were biologically transformed. These results provide the important information on the metabolism of ILG and ILQ, which may be helpful for the further research of their pharmacological mechanism.

In Vitro Biotransformation of Total Glycosides in Qiwei Baizhu Powder by the Gut Microbiota of Normal and Diarrheal Mice: Novel Insight Into the Biotransformation of Multi-Glycosides by the Gut Microbiota

“…Prominent ions were formed by the RDA reaction. Based on fragment information and literature data ( Li et al, 2018 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ; Wu et al, 2021 ), M3 and M5 were suggested to be the dehydrogenation and hydrogenation products of M2 , respectively. The fragment ion of M4 at m/z 239 (-14 Da) indicated the presence of methyl.…”