Research

Quasi-MSⁿ identification of flavanone 7-glycoside isomers in Da Chengqi Tang by high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

Fengguo Xu^1,2, Ying Liu³, Zunjian Zhang^1,2*, Cheng Yang^1,2 and Yuan Tian^1,2

• * Corresponding author: Zunjian Zhang zunjianzhangcpu@hotmail.com

Author Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Drug Quality Control and Pharmacovigilance (Ministry of Education), China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210009, PR China

² Center for Instrumental Analysis, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210009, PR China

³ Department of Pharmacy, Nanjing Municipal Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210001, PR China

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Chinese Medicine 2009, 4:15 doi:10.1186/1749-8546-4-15

Published: 24 July 2009

Abstract

Background

Da Chengqi Tang (DCT) is a common purgative formula in Chinese medicine. Flavanones are its major active compounds derived from Fructus Aurantii Immaturus. The present study developed an LC-MS/MS method to characterize two pairs of flavanone 7-glycoside isomers, i.e., hesperidin versus neohesperidin and naringin versus isonaringin.

Methods

After solid phase purification, components in sample were separated on a Agilent zorbax SB-C18 (5 μm, 250 mm × 4.6 mm) analytical column. ESI-MS and quasi-MSⁿ were performed in negative ion mode to obtain structural data of these two pairs of flavanone 7-glycoside isomers. Moreover, UV absorption was measured.

Results

There was no intra-pairs difference in the UV-Vis and MS/MS spectra of the two pairs of 7-glycoside isomers, whereas the mass spectrometry fragmentation pathways between pairs were different.

Conclusion

The present study developed a LC-MS/MS method to explore the inter- and intra-pair difference of two pairs of flavanone 7-glycoside isomers.