Ten Years of Research into Phytomedicines Analysis - An Era in New Technologies and Methods

Shun      Yao; Tingxi      Wu; Xinying      Li; Bin      Tu; Hang      Song

Abstract

During the 10-year period from 1999 to 2009, a rapid evolution was witnessed in the research of phytomedicines analysis. Radical developments in various chromatography methods have also taken place. Especially Ultra Performance LC spurred a revolution in liquid chromatography and brought regular analysis of new levels of efficiency. Another important addition has been the development of hyphenated techniques involving LC/MSn, LC/NMR, CE/MS, HSCCC/MS and TLC/MS, etc, which provide a more efficient analysis approach for complex systems in herbs, functional foods, and their related products. These achievements significantly enhance the possibility to find new lead compounds or traces of in vivo and in vitro metabolites of meaningful constituents, and provide both higher sample analysis throughput and better assay sensitivity for researchers.

Keywords: Phytomedicines, UPLC, Hyphenated techniques, Results and perspectives, chromatography, liquid chromatography, nutraceuticals, Traditional Herbal Medicines, Traditional Chinese Medicines, Thin Layer Chromatography, Capillary Electrophoresis, Photo Diode Array, Evaporative Light-Scattering, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Mass Spectra, Van Deemter equation, DryLab of Rheodyne Corp, Twave technology, Arostolochic Acid Event, isocratic elution, sizeexclusion, reverse phase, supercritical fluid extraction, solid phase extraction, Ultra fast high temperature liquid chromatography, human serum albumin, acid glycoprotein, UV spectra, narrow-bore fused-silica capillaries, cyclodextrin, flavonoids, lignans, quinones, terpenoids, ORD spectrometers, Salvia miltiorrhiza, Raman spectroscopy, catechins, aristolochic acids, Carboxymethyl chitosan, Droplet counter-current chromatography, Fast atom bombardment, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Mobile phase