Analysis of six active components in Radix tinosporae by nonaqueous capillary electrophoresis with mass spectrometry.

Nonaqueous capillary electrophoresis with mass spectrometry has advantages for the analysis of active components in herbs. Here, a rapid nonaqueous capillary electrophoresis with mass spectrometry method was developed to separate, identify, and quantify palmatin, columbin, cepharanthine, menisperine, magnoflorine, and 20-hydroxyecdysone in Radix tinosporae. Electrospray ionization MS1-3 spectra of the six components were collected and possible cleavage pathways of main fragment ions were elucidated. The conditions that could affect separation, such as the composition of running buffer and applied voltage, were studied, and the conditions that could affect the mass spectrometry detection, such as the composition and flow rate of sheath liquid, the pressure of nitrogen gas, and the temperature and flow rate of the dry gas, were also optimized. Under the optimized conditions, the correlation coefficient was >0.99. The relative standard deviations of migration time and peak areas were <10%. The recoveries were calculated to be 99.31-107.80% in real samples. It has been demonstrated that the proposed method has good potential to be applied to determine the six bioactive components in Radix tinosporae.