Multi-platform metabolomics approach to evaluate the authenticity of herbal medicine

Abstract

Herbal medicine has been traditionally and historically used worldwide. However, along with the increase usage of the herbal medicine, its market also has been suffered from the practice of adulteration, either genuinely by lack of experience or intentionally for business gains. Therefore, it is essential to develop an approach that could effectively ascertain the correct identification of the ingredients used in the herbal remedies. Here in this study, we illustrated the application of a multi-platform metabolomics approach in assisting the establishment of a better quality control method for herbal medicine. We first illustrated the capacity of UPLC-QTOFMS based metabolomics to discriminate well 4 common Panax species in Panax genus, namely Panax ginseng, Panax vietnamensis, Panax notoginseng, Panax quinquefolius. Next we further examine whether 1H-NMR based metabolomics approach could evaluate the same Panax ginseng samples but from dissimilar locations. The results showed that not only it could well differentiate those samples, but also it could point out the possible mixing proportion in case if those samples were mixed together. Additionally, utilizing those data derived from metabolomics approach, we also discussed the possibility in connecting metabolite variation to that of phylogenetic, as for UPLC-QTOFMS data and in building a model effectively assessing the mixing proportion of intentional admixtures, as for 1H-NMR data. Consequently, we believe that the ease and transferability of our approach as well as its applicability to other products could contribute to establishing a safer market and greater consumer confidence by preventing herbal medicine adulteration.