Identification of the tannins in traditional Chinese medicine Paeoniae Radix Alba by UHPLC-Q-Exactive Orbitrap MS
Pei Xiong, Shihan Qin, Kailin Li, Mingjuan Liu, Lian Zhu, Jie Peng, Silin Shi, Sunv Tang, Aiping Tian, Wei Cai
Abstract
Paeoniae Radix Alba (PRA, dried root of Paeonia lactiflora Pall.) is a widely used as traditional Chinese medicine and tannins are one of their main bioactive ingredients. However, there are rarely systematically investigated in this study. This study aimed to establish a rapid, high selective, high sensitive and effective method based on UHPLC-Q-Exactive Orbitrap MS for simultaneous identification the tannins in PRA. Separation was performed on Thermo Scientific Hypersil GOLD™ aQ (100 mm × 2.1 mm, 1.9 μm) using gradient elution consist of 0.1% formic acid acetonitrile and 0.1% formic acid water as the mobile phase at a flow rate of 0.3 mL/min. The mass spectrometer was operated with Q-Exactive Orbitrap spectrometer in negative ion mode. Finally, a total of 106 constituents were identified in PRA by UHPLC-Q-Exactive Orbitrap MS, 75 of those were reported from PRA for the first time. This result laid the foundation for in-depth research on the material basis efficacy and provided scientific basis for the selection of quality marker of PRA.