Analysis of prenylflavonoids from aerial parts of Epimedium grandiflorum and dietary supplements using HPTLC, UHPLC-PDA and UHPLC-QToF along with chemometric tools to differentiate Epimedium species

Insights into the Biological Activity and Cytotoxic Mechanism of Epimedium pubigerum

In this work, the phytochemical characterization, biological activity, and cytotoxic mechanism of aerial and rhizome methanol extracts (SME and RME) of Epimedium pubigerum were investigated to demonstrate its potential usage in the treatment of lung cancer. LC-HRMS analysis, total phenolic/flavonoid content assay, DPPH radical scavenging assay, DNA interaction, cytotoxicity, and western blotting were investigated using different methods. Fumaric acid was found to be the most abundant compound in both extracts. SME and RME were cytotoxic on A549 cells concentration-dependently. Also, in vitro scratch assay showed that SME and RME led to a significant anti-migratory effect at 1 mg/mL. Cytochrome c, p53, and caspase 3 expression significantly increased in the presence of RME compared to the control. All of these results claimed that RME might be suggested as a theoretically more effective phytotherapeutic agent for lung cancer compared to the effect seen with the SME.

Mass spectrometry-based approaches to assess the botanical authenticity of dietary supplements

Dietary supplements are legally considered foods despite frequently including medicinal plants as ingredients. Currently, the consumption of herbal dietary supplements, also known as plant food supplements (PFS), is increasing worldwide and some raw botanicals, highly demanded due to their popularity, extensive use, and/or well-established pharmacological effects, have been attaining high prices in the international markets. Therefore, botanical adulteration for profit increase can occur along the whole PFS industry chain, from raw botanicals to plant extracts, until final PFS. Besides the substitution of high-value species, unintentional mislabeling can happen in morphologically similar species. Both cases represent a health risk for consumers, prompting the development of numerous works to access botanical adulterations in PFS. Among different approaches proposed for this purpose, mass spectrometry (MS)-based techniques have often been reported as the most promising, particularly when hyphenated with chromatographic techniques. Thus, this review aims at describing an overview of the developments in this field, focusing on the applications of MS-based techniques to targeted and untargeted analysis to detect botanical adulterations in plant materials, extracts, and PFS.

An integrated strategy combining network toxicology and feature-based molecular networking for exploring hepatotoxic constituents and mechanism of Epimedii Folium-induced hepatotoxicity in vitro

Epimedii Folium (EF), a commonly used herbal medicine to treat osteoporosis, has caused serious concern due to potential hepatotoxicity. Until now, its intrinsic hepatotoxic mechanism and hepatotoxic ingredients remain unclear. Here, a novel high-throughput approach was designed to investigate the intrinsic hepatotoxic of EF. High-content screen imaging (HCS) and biochemical tests were first performed to obtain the cytotoxicity parameter matrix of 17 batch EF samples. EF-treated alpha mouse liver 12 (AML12) cells showed increased reactive oxygen species (ROS), reduced glutathione (GSH) and mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP), and apoptosis and cholestasis were further observed. Network toxicology predicted that EF-triggered hepatotoxiciy was involved in transcription factor (TF) activity. The FXR expression, screened by a TF PCR array, exhibited down-regulation following EF extract administration. Moreover, EF inhibited bile acid (BA) metabolism pathway in an FXR-dependent manner. Pearson correlation between the cytotoxicity parameter matrix and quantification feature table obtained from UHPLC-QTOF data of EF suggested 7 prenylated flavonoids possessed potent hepatotoxicities and their cytotoxicity order was further summarized. The transcriptional repression effects of them on FXR were also verified. Collectively, our findings indicate that FXR is probably responsible for EF-induced hepatotoxicity and prenylated flavonoids may be a major class of hepatotoxic constituents in EF.

Quality Consistency of Herbal Products: Chemical Evaluation

The widespread utility of herbal products has been rising considerably worldwide, including both developed and developing countries, leading to the rapid growth of their availability in the United States and globally. This substantial increase in consumption of herbal products has witnessed the emergence of adverse effects upon oral administration of certain of these products, and thus has raised safety concerns. The adverse effects caused by the consumption of certain botanical medicines occur primarily as a result of the poor quality of plant raw materials or the finished products, which inherently may affect safety and/or efficacy. The poor quality of some herbal products can be attributed to a lack of proper quality assurance and quality control. A high demand for herbal products that surpasses production, combined with a desire for maximizing profits, along with a lack of rigorous quality control within some manufacturing facilities have led to the emergence of quality inconsistencies. The underlying causes for this involve the misidentification of plant species, or their substitution, adulteration, or contamination with harmful ingredients. Analytical assessments have revealed there to be frequent and significant compositional variations between marketed herbal products. The inconsistency of the quality of herbal products can be ascribed essentially to the inconsistency of the botanical raw material quality used to manufacture the products. Thus, the quality assurance and the quality control of the botanical raw materials is may contribute significantly to improving the quality and consistency of the quality of the end products. The current chapter focuses on the chemical evaluation of quality and consistency of herbal products, including botanical dietary supplements. Different techniques, instruments, applications, and methods used in identifying, quantifying, and generating chemical fingerprints and chemical profiles of the ingredients of the herbal products will be described. The strengths and weaknesses of the various techniques available will be addressed. Limitations of the other approaches including morphological or microscopic analysis and DNA-based analysis will be presented.

Network Pharmacology-Based Analysis on the Curative Effect of Kunxian Capsules against Rheumatoid Arthritis

Kunxian capsules (KCs), a Chinese patent medicine, have been clinically proven to be effective in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, the chemical profile of KC remains to be characterized, and the mechanism underlying the protective effect against RA is yet to be elucidated. Here, a network pharmacology-based approach was adopted, integrated with the chemical profiling of KC by UHPLC-Q-TOF/MS. As a result, a total of 67 compounds have been identified from KC extract, among which 43 were authenticated by comparison to the mass spectrum of standard chemicals. ADME behaviors of the chemical constituents of KC were predicted, resulting in 35 putative active ingredients. Through target prediction of both active ingredients of KC and RA and PPI analysis, core targets were screened out, followed by biological process and related pathway enrichment. Then, a TCM-herb-ingredient-target-pathway network was constructed and a multicomponent, multitarget, and multipathway synergistic mechanism was proposed, providing an information basis for further investigation. The active pharmaceutical ingredients included mainly terpenoids (such as triptolide and celastrol), sesquiterpene pyridines (such as wilforgine and wilforine), and flavonoids (such as icariin, epimedin A, B, and C, and 2″-O-rhamnosylicariside II).

Benefits of Sebastiania hispida (Euphorbiaceae) extract and photobiomodulation therapy as potentially adjunctive strategies to be explored against snake envenoming

The purpose of this study was to assess the topic use of Sebastiania hispida extract and low-level gallium-arsenide laser irradiation (GaAs, 904 nm) to reduce the local myonecrosis and edema of Bothrops moojeni snake venom-injected gastrocnemius. Wistar rats receiving intramuscular venom injection (VBm) were compared with saline control (S) and envenomed rats receiving local exposure to plant extract (VExt) or laser irradiation (VL). The phytochemistry and thin-layer chromatography of S. hispida extract indicated the presence of phenolic compounds like gallic acid and flavonoids including quercetin. Gastrocnemius of VExt and VL groups had a significant reduction of edema and creatine kinase (CK) activities and a greater Myogenin (MyoG) expression compared to VBm group, with the plant extract efficacy better than laser exposure. Reduction of edema and serum CK activities reflects a lessening of muscle damage, whereas the increase of MyoG indicates myoblast differentiation and acceleration of muscle repair. The S. hispida richness in phenolic compounds and flavonoids, such as the light modulatory ability to triggering a multitude of cell signalings likely underlie the positive outcomes. Our findings suggest both treatments as potential auxiliary tools to be explored in clinical trials in combination with anti-venom therapy after Bothropic snakebites.

Tailor-made deep eutectic solvents extraction combined with UPLC-MS/MS determination of icarrin and icarisid II in rat plasma and its comparative pharmacokinetic application

Using green and high efficient solvents to extract and trace active ingredients of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in the complex biological samples was still challenging. In this paper, a co-friendly, fast pretreatment method with high extraction efficiency, based on the tailor-made deep eutectic solvent (DES) system, combined with ultra performance liquid chromatography-triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) was developed and validated for the determination of icarrin and icarisid II in rat plasma samples, which can be further applied to comparative pharmacokinetic studies after oral administration of Herba Epimedii and icarrin monomer in rats, respectively. PrE (l-proline: ethylene glycol = 1:4 mol/mol) and acetonitrile were optimized and combined as the tailor-made DES at the volumetric ratio of 3:7 to extract icarrin and icarisid II, and to precipitate the protein in rat plasma in one step simultaneously. The extraction efficiency of the tailor-made DES was about 1.7 times of DES (PrE). The extraction recovery of icarrin and icarisid II in rat plasma samples by this method were within the range of 90-110 %, and the lower limits of quantification (LLOQ) were 0.32 ng mL^-1 (icarrin) and 0.43 ng mL^-1 (icarisid II). There was a linear relationship between 0.32-80.16 ng mL^-1 (icarrin) and 0.43-107.4 ng mL^-1 (icarisid II), which effectively reduced the detection limit. In this comparative pharmacokinetic study, the maximum plasma concentration (C_max) and the area under plasma concentration-time curve (AUC_0-∞) of two analytes in rat plasma of Herba Epimedii group were both much higher than those in the icarrin monomer group, which suggested that other ingredients in Herba Epimedii may contribute to the in vivo absorption of icarrin and icarisid II. This simple, rapid, relatively green and high effeicient method would provide a new approach for the extraction of active ingredients from complex biological samples.

Construction of Fe3O4@α-glucosidase magnetic nanoparticles for ligand fishing of α-glucosidase inhibitors from a natural tonic Epimedii Folium

Inhibition of α-glucosidase activity is an effective way for treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus. Epimedii Folium is an important source of α-glucosidase inhibitors (AGIs), however bioactive compounds and pharmacological mechanisms remained unclear. In this study, a novel strategy was established, which harnessed α-glucosidase functionalized magnetic beads to fish out potential AGIs, followed by UPLC-MS/MS analysis for their identification. Furthermore, molecular docking was employed to predict binding patterns between the AGIs and the enzyme, and IC₅₀ values was estimated as well. After response surface methodology optimization, the highest activity of Fe₃O₄@α-glucosidase has been achieved when 1.17 mg/mL of α-glucosidase was immobilized in phosphate buffer (pH 6.81) for 4.22 h. Moreover, eight flavonoids were fished out from the extract of Epimedii Folium, and then identified to be epimedin A, epimedin B, epimedin C, icariin, sagittatoside A, sagittatoside B, 2"-O-rhamnosyl icariside II and baohuoside I. All of them were further confirmed to be AGIs through in vitro inhibitory assay and molecular docking. Among those, baohuoside I and sagittatoside B possessed stronger inhibitory activity than acarbose. The approach has a significant prospect in conveniently screening bioactive compounds that target various receptors, which provided an efficient platform for new drug development from natural products.