Review

Recent advances in the compound-oriented and pattern-oriented approaches to the quality control of herbal medicines

Zhongda Zeng^1,2 , Foo-tim Chau^1,3 , Hoi-yan Chan¹ , Chui-yee Cheung¹ , Tsui-yan Lau¹ , Shuiyin Wei¹ , Daniel Kam-wah Mok¹ , Chi-on Chan¹ and Yizeng Liang²

¹  Chemometrics and Herbal Medicine Laboratory, Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, PR China

²  Research Centre of Modernization of Chinese Medicine, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410083, PR China

³  State Key Laboratory of Chinese Medicine and Molecular Pharmacology, Shenzhen 518057, PR China

author email corresponding author email

Chinese Medicine 2008, 3:9doi:10.1186/1749-8546-3-9

Published:	4 August 2008

Abstract

The current approaches to the quality control of herbal medicines are either compound-oriented or pattern-oriented, the former targeting specific components with some known chemical properties and the latter targeting all detectable components. The marker approach uses specific chemical compounds with known molecular structures, while the multi-compound approach uses both chemical compounds with known structures and those with partial chemical information e.g. retention times, mass spectra and ultraviolet spectra. Apart from chromatographic techniques, new techniques such as oscillating and electrochemistry fingerprints have been developed for quality control. Chemometric resolution methods are widely used for component deconvolution and data comparison. Pattern recognition techniques are used for authentication of herbal medicines.