title: Direct analysis of traditional Chinese medicines by mass spectrometry.
abstract: Analysis of traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) plays important roles in quality control of TCMs and understanding their pharmacological effects. Mass spectrometry (MS) is a technique of choice for analysis of TCMs due to its superiority in speed, sensitivity and specificity. However, conventional MS analysis of TCMs typically requires extensive sample pretreatment and chromatographic separation, which could be time-consuming and laborious, prior to the analysis. The expanding usage of TCMs worldwide demands development of rapid, cost-effective and reliable methods for analysis of TCMs. In recent years, new sample preparation and ionization techniques have been developed to enable direct analysis of TCMs by MS, significantly reducing the analysis time and cost. In this review, various MS-based techniques, mainly including ambient ionization-MS and MALDI-MS based techniques, applied for direct analysis of TCMs are summarized and their applicability and future prospects are discussed.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Chirosciences, Food Safety and Technology Research Centre and Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region; State Key Laboratory of Chinese Medicine and Molecular Pharmacology (Incubation) and Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Food Biological Safety Control, Shenzhen Research Institute of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Shenzhen 518057, China.
authors.forename: Melody Yee-Man
authors.initials: MY
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Chirosciences, Food Safety and Technology Research Centre and Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region; State Key Laboratory of Chinese Medicine and Molecular Pharmacology (Incubation) and Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Food Biological Safety Control, Shenzhen Research Institute of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Shenzhen 518057, China. Electronic address: bckin@polyu.edu.hk.
authors.forename: Pui-Kin
authors.initials: PK
authors.lastname: So
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Chirosciences, Food Safety and Technology Research Centre and Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region; State Key Laboratory of Chinese Medicine and Molecular Pharmacology (Incubation) and Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Food Biological Safety Control, Shenzhen Research Institute of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Shenzhen 518057, China. Electronic address: zhongping.yao@polyu.edu.hk.
authors.forename: Zhong-Ping
authors.initials: ZP
authors.lastname: Yao
mesh_terms: D013058:Mass Spectrometry / Q000379:methods*; D008516:Medicine, Chinese Traditional; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
keywords: Ambient ionization; Direct analysis; Mass spectrometry; Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization; Traditional Chinese medicines