Isolation and Qualitative Characterization of Antidepressant Marsiline by Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry [LC-MS/MS] from Marsilea quadrifolia L.

Anxiety, depression and mental health problems constitute the second most common chronic condition in clinical practice. Various types of herbal medicines are being used as anxiolytic drugs, which necessitates the development of newer and more effective antidepressants from traditional medicinal plants whose psychotherapeutic potential needs to be assessed in a variety of animal models [1,2]. The main objective of this work was to develop a simple, sensitive, rapid and reliable liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method for the simultaneous identification of Marsiline (Fig. 1), a major central nervous system active principal, that has been found to be responsible for sedative and anticonvulsant activity in Marsilea sp. (1, 2). The LC-MS/MS system (API 2000) with triple quadruple tandem mass spectrometer (AB Sciex Instruments, Foster, Canada) was used for qualitative determination of Marsiline from methanolic extract. The most active ingredient Marsiline was extracted by simple liquid-liquid extraction with organic solvent (benzene:n-hexane 1:1 v/v). The protonated analyte was quantitated by positive ionization in multiple reactions monitoring with a mass spectrometer. The MRM transition of 815–225 m/z was used to measure Marsiline. Data acquisition was performed with Analyst 1.4.1. software. This method will be further applied to quantify Marsiline content from other Marselia sp. Acknowledgements: The authors are indebted to the University Grants Commission (UGC), New Delhi, India for their financial support in the form a Major Research Project. We express our thanks and gratitude to Bioequivalence Study Centre, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-700 032, West Bengal, India for providing us the necessary instrumental facility (LC-ESI-MS/MS). References: [1] Bhattamisra SK, et al. (2007) Journal of Herbal Medicine and Toxicology, 1(1): 15–20. [2] Chatterjee A, et al. (1963) Journal of Experimental Medical Sciences, 7: 53–67.