Sauchinone, a biologically active lignan found in Saururus chinensis (Saururaceae), exerts various biological activities against jaundice, inflammatory disease, hepatic steatosis, and oxidative injury. Despite its diverse applications, there exists some information about sauchinone's pharmacokinetics but its tissue distribution, metabolism, and tentative metabolites have not been reported yet. Thus we investigated the pharmacokinetics of sauchinone in mice using microsampling and HPLC-MS/MS methods. Sauchinone presented linear pharmacokinetics at intravenous doses 7.5-20 mg/kg and oral doses 20-500 mg/kg. However, the metabolism of sauchinone was saturated and this agent presented nonlinear pharmacokinetics at 50 mg/ kg in the intravenous study. At sauchinone 20 mg/kg the F of sauchinone was 7.76% of the oral dose despite that 77.9% of sauchinone was absorbed. This might be due to extensive metabolism of sauchinone in S9 fractions of liver and small intestine. Tentative metabolites of sauchinone by oxidation, dioxidation, methylation, demethylation, dehydrogenation, or bis-glucuronide conjugation were detected in plasma and S9 fractions of liver, intestine, and kidney. The distribution of sauchinone was considerably high (tissue-to-plasma (T/P) ratios, >1) in liver, small intestine, kidney, lung, muscle, fat, or mesentery after intravenous and oral administration and in stomach and large intestine only after oral administration. The protein binding value of sauchinone was 53.0%. These pharmacokinetic data of sauchinone provide an important basis for preclinical applications and experimental methods can be adjusted to evaluate the pharmacokinetics of natural products in mice.Key words sauchinone; pharmacokinetics; metabolite identification; Saururus chinensis; mouse Pharmacokinetic studies to investigate the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) of pharmacologically active compounds of interest are essential in the preclinical and clinical process 1,2) because ADME of compounds are fundamental to therapeutic outcome in relation with the efficacy and safety.3) Along with the usages of a large number of herbal products as adjuvant or alternative medicines, the investigation of pharmacokinetic properties in herbal products has been demanding. [4][5][6][7] In addition, the tissue distribution and metabolism studies are meaningful to elucidate the pharmacological effects relying on the specific delivery and affinity of compounds to various tissues, extensive metabolizing organs, tentative metabolites identification.7-10) At these points, the inevitable and integral reasons for pharmacokinetic investigations using mice, not like rats, are as followings: it is arduous to secure a sufficient amount of herbal product using rats and the use of various knockout or xenografted mouse models to demonstrate the pharmacological activities of herbal compounds is increasing in preclinical investigations 11,12) in terms of the different physiological and pathological conditions between mice and rats. 13,14) Abo...