Natural Products Application Solution with UNIFI

There are an increasing number of herbal products being used around the world, due to their perceived nature as a safe and cheaper alternative to prescription drugs. However, a major concern is the rising number of cases of adulterated herbal products containing undeclared synthetic compounds, or deliberate substitution of ingredients for economic benefit and pharmacological action. The following poster from Waters presents LC–MS based methods widely-used for the identification of ingredients and potential adulterants due to their high sensitivity and selectively for samples with complex matrices.

Ginseng is a slow-growing perennial plant believe to offer different therapeutic benefits such as CNS stimulant activity, hypoglycemic properties and sedative effects. Ion mobility is a rapid orthogonal gas separation phase technique that allows another dimension of separation to be obtained within an LC timeframe. This application note investigates the use of IM separation in combination with microflow chromatography to provide a route to specific and unambiguous identification of ginsenosides.

This poster demonstrates the use of UPLC/QTof-MS coupled to NPAS with UNIFI for the identification of total material base including target and non-target ingredients. The efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine has been affirmed by thousands of years of history as well as by modern clinical practice. However, understanding the material base, especially to rapidly identify all of the chemical components and determining their method of efficacy, still poses a challenge.

Multi-analyte screening methodologies are essential for monitoring food and environmental samples across the globe. Compliant samples must be eliminated to allow non-compliant samples to be identified for subsequent confirmation and quantitation. This application note describes the ease of use and efficacy of a non-targeted, data independent, analysis type (MSE and HDMSE), coupled with UNIFI.

In this application note, we illustrate the selectivity of collision cross section (CCS) measurements used in combination with other recent MS technology enhancements for profiling complex mixtures. A combination of high resolution mass spectrometry and high efficiency ion mobility based measurements and separations is used. Ion mobility is a rapid orthogonal gas separation phase technique that allows another dimension of separation to be obtained within an LC timeframe. Compounds can be differentiated based on size, shape, and charge.

Using the binary comparison workflow available with the Natural Products Application Solution with UNIFI, this application demonstrates the fast and accurate detection of the differences and similarities of chemical ingredients in Shuanghuanglian oral drink from two different manufacturers. The solution improves researchers’ ability to understand ingredient differences of the same product manufactured by different companies, and it enables more accurate quality control of a product between batches made by a single manufacturer. UNIFI Software provides a simple and effective approach to all binary comparisons among similar samples.

This application note describes how to use the Natural Products Application Solution with UNIFI to identify chemical ingredients and deduce possible herbal content from unknown samples using a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) tablet product as an application example.

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