Nonaqueous CE ESI‐IT‐MS analysis of Amaryllidaceae alkaloids

Abstract

The Amaryllidaceae are widely distributed medical plants. Lycorine, lycoramine, lycoremine, and lycobetaine are the major active alkaloids in Amaryllidaceae plants. A nonaqueous CE ESI-IT-MS method for separation, identification, and quantification of the Amaryllidaceae alkaloids has been developed. The MS(1-3) behavior has been studied and the fragmentation pathways of main fragment ions have been proposed. The effects of several factors such as composition and concentration of buffer, applied voltage, composition, and flow rate of the sheath liquid, nebulizing gas pressure, flow rate, and temperature of drying gas were investigated. Under the optimal conditions, the linear concentration range of these compounds was wide with the correlation coefficient (R(2) ) >0.99. RSDs of migration time and peak areas were <10%. The LODs were <240 ng/mL. The proposed method can be successfully applied to the determination of the related alkaloids in the Lycoris radiata roots.

The relevance of pharmacognosy in pharmacological research on herbal medicinal products

“…In contrast, micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) allows the separation of both charged and neutral analytes, and it provides additional separation selectivity for charged species that are difficult to separate by CZE, as separation is based on a combination of electrophoretic and chromatographic mechanisms [184]. In recent years, nonaqueous CE (NACE), which is based on electrolyte solutions prepared from pure organic solvents, has become increasingly popular for phytochemical analyses because of the good solubility of many target analytes in the organic mobile phases, alternative selectivity characteristics, reduced electrophoretic currents, and a very good feasibility for coupling with MS detectors [173,185]. In general, CE instruments can be coupled with similar detectors as LC instruments, like UV, DAD, ELSD, and MS detectors.…”

Advance of CE and CEC in phytochemical analysis (2012–2013)

“…Especially, NACE, using organic solvents instead of water, was used in CZE. ACN , methanol , 1‐propanol , or their mixture were commonly used. Besides, a novel and very simple NACE method has been established for analyzing seven quaternary alkaloids in Coptis rhizome using 1‐alkyl‐3‐methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate‐based ionic liquid (IL) as BGE.…”

“…The main drawback of CE is the low detection capability, and the utilization of hyphenated MS detection offers high sensitivity and the possibility of structurally characterizing the analytes. Sheath liquid is widely used for transferring analytes from liquid phase of CE to gas phase of MS . Actually, various sheathless interfaces have been developed to enhance the concentration sensitivity of CE–MS .…”

“…Indeed, sheathless CE‐MS has been used for metabolome analysis . Great success has been achieved in online coupling of CE to MS (CE‐MS) using ESI . Volatile electrolyte buffer, such as formic acid , ammonium acetate , ammonium acetate‐acetic acid , ammonium formate‐acetic acid , were commonly used.…”

Simultaneous determination of galanthamine and lycorine in Lycoris radiata by a capillary electrophoresis with an electrochemiluminescence method

“…It could also be used for the synthesis of RNA and proteins , suppressing the growth of cells and the activity of the acetylcholine . There are many determination methods for GA and LY, such as UV‐visible spectrometry , chemiluminescence , fluorescence spectrometry , spectrophotometry , chromatography with MS , radioimmunoassay and so on. But these methods are either highly costly, or time consuming, or dangerous to operate.…”