Haiyan Jiang1, Yaxin Zhang2, Zhigang Liu3, Xiangyi Wang2, Jiuming He4, Hongtao Jin5. 1. New Drug Safety Evaluation Center, Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Beijing 100050, China. 2. State Key Laboratory of Bioactive Substance and Function of Natural Medicines, Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Beijing 100050, China. 3. School of Biological Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510006, China. 4. State Key Laboratory of Bioactive Substance and Function of Natural Medicines, Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Beijing 100050, China; NMPA Key Laboratory for Safety Research and Evaluation of Innovative Drug, Beijing 100050, China. Electronic address: hejiuming@imm.ac.cn. 5. New Drug Safety Evaluation Center, Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Beijing 100050, China; Beijing Union-Genius Pharmaceutical Technology Development Co., Ltd., Beijing 100176, China; NMPA Key Laboratory for Safety Research and Evaluation of Innovative Drug, Beijing 100050, China. Electronic address: jinhongtao@imm.ac.cn.
Abstract
ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) have made great contributions to the prevention and treatment of human diseases in China, and especially in cases of COVID-19. However, due to quality problems, the lack of standards, and the diversity of dosage forms, adverse reactions to TCMs often occur. Moreover, the composition of TCMs makes them extremely challenging to extract and isolate, complicating studies of toxicity mechanisms. AIM OF THE REVIEW: The aim of this paper is therefore to summarize the advanced applications of mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) technology in the quality control, safety evaluations, and determination of toxicity mechanisms of TCMs. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Relevant studies from the literature have been collected from scientific databases, such as "PubMed", "Scifinder", "Elsevier", "Google Scholar" using the keywords "MSI", "traditional Chinese medicines", "quality control", "metabolomics", and "mechanism". RESULTS: MSI is a new analytical imaging technology that can detect and image the metabolic changes of multiple components of TCMs in plants and animals in a high throughput manner. Compared to other chemical analysis methods, such as liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), this method does not require the complex extraction and separation of TCMs, and is fast, has high sensitivity, is label-free, and can be performed in high-throughput. Combined with chemometrics methods, MSI can be quickly and easily used for quality screening of TCMs. In addition, this technology can be used to further focus on potential biomarkers and explore the therapeutic/toxic mechanisms of TCMs. CONCLUSIONS: As a new type of analysis method, MSI has unique advantages to metabolic analysis, quality control, and mechanisms of action explorations of TCMs, and contributes to the establishment of quality standards to explore the safety and toxicology of TCMs.
ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) have made great contributions to the prevention and treatment of human diseases in China, and especially in cases of COVID-19. However, due to quality problems, the lack of standards, and the diversity of dosage forms, adverse reactions to TCMs often occur. Moreover, the composition of TCMs makes them extremely challenging to extract and isolate, complicating studies of toxicity mechanisms. AIM OF THE REVIEW: The aim of this paper is therefore to summarize the advanced applications of mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) technology in the quality control, safety evaluations, and determination of toxicity mechanisms of TCMs. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Relevant studies from the literature have been collected from scientific databases, such as "PubMed", "Scifinder", "Elsevier", "Google Scholar" using the keywords "MSI", "traditional Chinese medicines", "quality control", "metabolomics", and "mechanism". RESULTS: MSI is a new analytical imaging technology that can detect and image the metabolic changes of multiple components of TCMs in plants and animals in a high throughput manner. Compared to other chemical analysis methods, such as liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), this method does not require the complex extraction and separation of TCMs, and is fast, has high sensitivity, is label-free, and can be performed in high-throughput. Combined with chemometrics methods, MSI can be quickly and easily used for quality screening of TCMs. In addition, this technology can be used to further focus on potential biomarkers and explore the therapeutic/toxic mechanisms of TCMs. CONCLUSIONS: As a new type of analysis method, MSI has unique advantages to metabolic analysis, quality control, and mechanisms of action explorations of TCMs, and contributes to the establishment of quality standards to explore the safety and toxicology of TCMs.