Deng- Zhan-Xi-Xin injection , a famous traditional Chinese medicine prescription (TCMP), is widely used for the treatment of cardiovascular and cerebral vessel diseases, such as ischemic stroke, coronary heart disease and angina pectoris . It was made from the whole herb of Erigeron breviscapus (Vant.) Hand.-Mazz.. It was well known that both chemical constituents and metabolites in vivo played a key role in the clinical efficacy of TCMP [1] . Owing to the complexity of chemical constituents in TCMP [2] and the lower intensity of prototypes and metabolites in rats biofluids , the detection and identification of chemical constituents and their metabolites became a great challenge [3]. In this work, an integrative strategy based on ultra performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry and UNIFITM software combined with multiple data processing approaches was proposed to identify the chemical constituents and metabolites of Deng-Zhan-Xi-Xin injection. As a result, a total of 110 compounds were identified or tentatively characterized, including 40 compounds in vitro, 25 prototypes and 45 metabolites in rat plasma, urine and feces. It was the first time that the metabolic profiling of Deng-Zhan-Xi-Xin injection was systematic researched, glucuronidation and sulfation conjugation were the main metabolic pathway. This study provided significant information for its further research of Deng-Zhan-Xi-Xin injection. Moreover, it provided valuable strategy for rapidly screening and identifying chemical components and metabolites of other TCMP s.
[1] Qiao X, Wang Q, Wang S, Miao J, Li Y, Xiang C, Guo D, Ye M. Scientific Reports 2016; 6: 39534
[2] Sheng N, Zheng H, Xiao Y, Wang Z, Li M, Zhang J, Journal of Chromatography A 2017; 1517: 97–107
[3] Zhang J, Zhang X, Zhao Y, Song A, Sun W, Yin R. Journal of Separation Science 2018; 41,7: 74–788