Herbal Medicine: Investigations on Bioactive Components, Pharmacokinetics and QualityControl Methods

Herbal Medicines (HMs) have been gaining ever-increasing interest and acceptance in many different countries. Chemical compositions, pharmacokinetics, metabolomics as well as quality control of HMs have become important concerns for both health authorities and the public. Our laboratory has been analyzing HMs for the last more than a decade and a great number of HMs were investigated in detail with regard to their chemistry, bioactive components, pharmacokinetics study, and quality control, etc. In this report, more than 100 new compounds (flavonoids, saponins, alkaloids) were summarized, and sensitive and accurate method was proposed for studying the absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion of active components in HMs. Finally, a great number of validated methods were developed for quality control of HMs, including high-performance liquid chromatography-diode array coupled with evaporative light scattering detection (HPLC-DAD-ELSD), rapid resolution liquid chromatography-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (RRLC-TOF-MS). In conclusion, chemical components, pharmacokinetics and quality control are key issues to meet the criteria needed to support their use worldwide. HMs are multicomponent complex systems and adequate or acceptable analytical methodologies are still needed for researching and evaluating HMs. Acknowledgements: Financial support for this research from the National Science Foundation of China (No. 90709020, 30530870) is gratefully acknowledged. References: [1] General Guidelines for Methodologies on Research and Evaluation of Traditional Medicine, World Health Organization, Geneva, 2000, p. 3–4.