The European Pharmacopoeia (Ph. Eur.) is the legal and scientific reference for the
quality control of medicines, including herbal drugs (HDs) and their preparations
(HDPs). Typically, quality is defined using markers or active constituents by the
means of HPTLC, HPLC, GC. Nevertheless, substitution or adulteration of HDs and HDPs
either intentionally, e.g. motivated by the desire to maximize financial gains, or
unintentionally, e.g. by clerical errors or lack of knowledge, is not a rare occurrence
and can have tragic consequences.
Diverse analytical methods including DNA fingerprinting, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
(NMR), Near InfraRed (NIR) and (bio)sensors can be very useful as integrative/ alternative
analytical methods. Identification of plants at the species level can be successfully
based on genome-based methods, using DNA barcodes, the nucleotide sequence of a short
DNA fragment, as in the case of different species of goji berry. NMR can provide direct
NMR fingerprint determination (complete assignment of the signals by 1D and 2D experiments),
and fully characterize different commercial extracts of ginkgo or even complex HDPs
mixtures. NIR spectroscopy is a fast qualitative and quantitative analytical method,
getting knowledge about substitution of plant species, i.e. star anise and the neurotoxic
Japanese star anise, Stephania tetrandra and the nephrotoxic Aristolochia fangchi. Finally, chemical and biological sensors represent one of the most interesting analytical
tool because of the versatility of the recognition element able to recognize the presence
of undefined DNA intercalating constituents or specific classes of metabolites could
be related to the substitution or adulteration [1], [2].
