Ultra performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometric procedure for qualitative and quantitative analyses of nortriterpenoids and lignans in the genus Schisandra.

An ultra performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (QTOF-MS) procedure is designed for the first simultaneous analysis of nortriterpenoids and lignans in Schisandra samples. The method consists of three individual mass spectrometric experiments, including the full scan MS, MS/MS experiment and in-source collision induced dissociation (CID) MS/MS, which enable the identification of diagnostic fragmentation pathways of nortriterpenoids and lignans. As such, a total of 6 nortriterpenoids and 10 lignans were unequivocally identified, and one nortriterpenoid and 20 lignans were tentatively identified from different Schisandra samples within 12.5 min. In addition, 6 nortriterpenoids and 10 lignans were quantified in 48 samples of S. chinensis and S. sphenanthera using an extract ion chromatogram (XIC) of the full scan MS experiment. Dataset obtained from UPLC-MS was processed with principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal partial least squared discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) to compare the difference between the two Schisandra species.