Christophe Tistaert

Chromatographic separation techniques and data handling methods for herbal fingerprints: a review.

As herbal medicines have an important position in health care systems worldwide, their current assessment and quality control are a major bottleneck. Over the past decade, major steps were taken not only to improve the quality of the herbal products but also to develop analytical methods ensuring their quality. Nowadays, chromatographic fingerprinting is the generally accepted technique for the assessment and quality control of herbal products. This paper briefly considers the evolution of the regulations and guidelines on the quality control of herbal medicines, and reviews the established analytical techniques for herbal fingerprinting with an emphasis on the most recent developments, such as miniaturized techniques, new stationary phases, analysis at high temperatures and multi-dimensional chromatography. Accessory to the new analytical techniques, the chemometric data handling techniques applied are discussed. Chemometrics provide scientists with useful tools in understanding the huge amounts of data generated by the analytical advances and prove to be valuable for quality control, classification and modelling of, and discrimination between herbal fingerprints.

Development of HPLC fingerprints for Mallotus species extracts and evaluation of the peaks responsible for their antioxidant activity

Some Mallotus species are used in traditional medicine in Vietnam. To use certain species in Western medicines or as food supplements, they should be identified and quality control should be more strict, for instance, to avoid the erroneous switching of species. In species with interesting activities, the compounds responsible for them should be identified. For these identifications, HPLC fingerprint methodology can be used. In this paper, HPLC fingerprints of different lengths were developed for a number of Mallotus species. Secondly, a multivariate regression model was constructed to model the antioxidant activity of the Mallotus samples from the HPLC fingerprints with the aim to indicate peaks possibly responsible for this activity. For this purpose, after data pretreatment, the calibration technique partial least squares (PLS) was applied.

Potential antioxidant compounds in Mallotus species fingerprints. Part I: Indication, using linear multivariate calibration techniques

Some Mallotus species are used in traditional medicine in Vietnam and China. Some also show interesting activities, such as antioxidant and cytotoxic ones. Combining fingerprint technology with data-handling techniques allows indicating the peaks potentially responsible for given activities. In this study it is aspired to indicate from chromatographic fingerprints the peaks potentially responsible for the antioxidant activity of several Mallotus species. Relevant information was extracted using linear multivariate calibration techniques, both before and after alignment of the fingerprints with correlation optimized warping (COW). From the studied techniques, stepwise multiple linear regression is least recommended as it made an inadequate variable selection. Principal component regression theoretically can take largely varying variables uncorrelated to the antioxidant activity into account. However, in practice in the actual case study this problem was limited. These problems in principle do not occur using partial least squares (PLS) models. Of the tested PLS methods, orthogonal projections to latent structures was preferred because of its simplicity, reproducibility, reduced model complexity and improved interpretability of the regression coefficients, yielding a clearer view on the individual contribution of the compounds. Furthermore, reducing analysis times from 60min to 35 and 22.5min resulted in the same main compounds, indicated responsible for the antioxidant activity. Models built after alignment by COW did not result in additional information.

Near-infrared spectroscopy for in-line monitoring of protein unfolding and its interactions with lyoprotectants during freeze-drying.

This work presents near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) as an in-line process analyzer for monitoring protein unfolding and protein-lyoprotectant hydrogen bond interactions during freeze-drying. By implementing a noncontact NIR probe in the freeze-drying chamber, spectra of formulations containing a model protein immunoglobulin G (IgG) were collected each process minute. When sublimation was completed in the cake region illuminated by the NIR probe, the frequency of the amide A/II band (near 4850 cm(-1)) was monitored as a function of water elimination. These two features were well correlated during protein dehydration in the absence of protein unfolding (desired process course), whereas consistent deviations from this trend to higher amide A/II frequencies were shown to be related to protein unfolding. In formulations with increased sucrose concentrations, the markedly decreased amide A/II frequencies seen immediately after sublimation indicated an increased extent of hydrogen bond interaction between the proteins backbone and surrounding molecules. At the end of drying, there was evidence of nearly complete water substitution for formulations with 1%, 5%, and 10% sucrose. The presented approach shows promising perspectives for early fault detection of protein unfolding and for obtaining mechanistic process information on actions of lyoprotectants.

Potential antioxidant compounds in Mallotus species fingerprints. Part II: fingerprint alignment, data analysis and peak identification.

Some Mallotus species are commonly used as traditional medicine (TM) ingredients in Vietnam and China, but only a few are studied for their activities. In Part I, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) fingerprints of 39 Mallotus samples (17 species) were developed and, because of the complexity of and the large differences between the samples, it was chosen to analyse the unaligned fingerprints. The peaks, potentially responsible for the antioxidant activity in given Mallotus species, were indicated by the regression coefficients from an orthogonal projections to latent structures (O-PLS) model. In the present study, an in depth discussion on the need for alignment of the Mallotus fingerprints for the indication of the potentially active compounds is made, as well as an experimental analysis and identification of the previously indicated peaks by HPLC-mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS). Additionally, to thoroughly study and discuss the alignment problem, the modelling and prediction of the antioxidant activity of green tea samples based on HPLC fingerprints were also considered.

Quality control of Citri reticulatae pericarpium: exploratory analysis and discrimination.

Extracts of Citri reticulatae pericarpium (PCR) are commonly used in the Traditional Chinese Medicine. The quality control of PCR is currently performed by single marker analysis, which can hardly describe the complexity of such natural samples. In this study, a fingerprint methodology for PCR based on high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was developed and validated. A total of 69 fingerprints of authenticated PCR samples, commercial PCR samples, mixed peel samples, and other Citrus peels were recorded. Exploratory data analysis allowed optimizing the extraction procedure and detecting mixed peel samples. Once the optimizations were performed and the method validated, discrimination between the authentic PCR samples and all other samples was performed by p-Discriminant Partial Least Squares. The established model was able to differentiate between classes with a high reliability for each sample. Furthermore, evaluation of the score and loading plots of the model indicated nobiletin, tangeretin, naringin and hesperidin as important markers for the quality control of PCR.

Dissimilar chromatographic systems to indicate and identify antioxidants from Mallotus species

The genus of Mallotus contains several species commonly used as traditional medicines in oriental countries. A data set containing 39 Mallotus samples, differing in species, cultivation conditions, harvest season and/or part of the plant was used to develop fingerprints on two dissimilar chromatographic systems. An exploratory analysis with principal component analysis (PCA) was performed on both data sets individually. The results were also combined to obtain additional information on the unknown samples included in the data set. Furthermore, the antioxidant activity of the samples was measured and modelled as a function of the fingerprints using the orthogonal projections to latent structures (O-PLS) technique. The regression coefficients of the models were studied to indicate the peaks potentially responsible for the antioxidant activity. The indicated peaks were analyzed and identified by HPLC coupled to mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS). Because of the complexity of biological samples, it was aspired to separate co-eluting components based on the significant difference in chromatographic selectivity on the dissimilar systems and consequently obtain additional, complementary information on the contribution of the individual components to the antioxidant activity. The results illustrate the potential use of dissimilar chromatographic systems. Several initially co-eluting compounds could be separated on the dissimilar system. The corresponding regression coefficients provided complementary information on the potential antioxidant activity of the separated compounds.

Potentially antioxidant compounds indicated from Mallotus and Phyllanthus species fingerprints

The genera of Mallotus and Phyllanthus contain several species that are commonly used as traditional medicines in oriental countries. Some species show interesting pharmaceutical activities, such as an antioxidant activity. To produce clinically useful medicines or food supplements (nutraceuticals) from these herbs, the species should be identified and a thorough quality control should be implemented. Nowadays, the integration of chromatographic and chemometric approaches allows a high-throughput identification and activity prediction of medicinal plants. In this study, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) were applied and compared to distinguish Mallotus and Phyllanthus species. Moreover, peaks from their chromatographic fingerprints, which were responsible for their antioxidant activity were assigned. For the latter purpose, the relevant information was extracted from the chromatographic fingerprints using linear multivariate calibration techniques, i.e., Partial Least Squares (PLS) and Orthogonal Projections to Latent Structures (O-PLS). Results reveal that exploratory analysis using PCA shows somewhat diverging clustering tendencies between Mallotus and Phyllanthus samples than HCA. However, both approaches mainly confirm each other. Concerning the multivariate calibration techniques, both PLS and O-PLS models demonstrate good predictive abilities. By comparing the regression coefficients of the models with the chromatographic fingerprints, the peaks that are potentially responsible for the antioxidant activity of the extracts could be confirmed.

Bilinear decomposition based alignment of chromatographic profiles.

A novel alignment procedure for chromatographic signals with photodiode array detection is presented. At first, the complexity of the chromatographic signals is reduced by chemometric resolution of the pure constituents. For this, the application of multivariate curve resolution-alternating least squares leads to the decomposition of the multiway data block into a chemically meaningful bilinear model representing the chromatographic profiles and their spectral signatures. The flexible implementation of a spectral selectivity constraint allows the background to be differentiated from the constituent spectra. Hereby, the pure concentration profiles are obtained which are consequently individually aligned by correlation optimized warping. In its final step, the procedure reconstitutes the original data with the aligned chromatographic profiles and their corresponding spectra. The alignment is evaluated for two sets of chromatographic signals. The new procedure improves the original application of correlation optimized warping minimizing the risks of aligning noncorresponding chromatographic information.

Multivariate data analysis to evaluate the fingerprint peaks responsible for the cytotoxic activity of Mallotus species

The Mallotus genus comprises numerous species used as traditional medicines in oriental countries and provides scientists a broad basis in the search for pharmacologically active constituents. In this paper, the cytotoxicity of 39 Mallotus extracts, different in species, part of the plant used, origin, and harvest season, is evaluated combining cytotoxicity assays with fingerprint technology and data handling tools. At first, the antiproliferative activity of the plant extracts is analyzed both on a non-cancerous cell line (WI-38--human lung fibroblast) and on a cancerous cell line (HeLa human cervix carcinoma). The results are linked to a data set of high-performance liquid chromatographic fingerprint profiles of the samples using multivariate calibration techniques. The regression coefficients of the multivariate model are then evaluated to indicate those peaks potentially responsible for the cytotoxic activity of the Mallotus extracts. In a final step, the cytotoxic extracts are analyzed by HPLC-MS and the indicated peaks identified.