The usage and discovery of natural products for herbal remedies, or phytopharmaceuticals,
are expanding every year worldwide. The globalization of the herbal supplement supply
chain has necessitated for the standardization of the composition of natural products
for proper quality control and authentication. Traditional quality control analytical
methods are often imprecise due to the complexity and wide diversity in chemical constituents
in herbal products. Metabolomics is a new emerging field that focuses on the qualitative
and quantitative analysis of endogenous metabolites in cells, tissues and organisms.
This enables a holistic approach in understanding vital information about the sample
such as place of origin, type of species and environmental condition. NMR spectroscopy
excels at metabolomic studies as it provides a high-throughput, reproducible and detailed
methodology in visualizing the metabolic profile of an organism. In this study, we
will show our progress in developing a NMR-based fingerprinting tool for targeted
and non-targeted screening of natural product extracts. This study will discuss the
application of NMR spectroscopy in (1) understanding the characteristics or natural
variation in different natural products such as skullcap, black cohosh and ginseng
(2) identifying key metabolites that classify them to their various groups and (3)
providing a powerful tool to quantify specific metabolites of interest in the sample
extracts.
