Evaluation of a multiple and global analytical indicator of batch consistency: traditional Chinese medicine injection as a case study

Quantitative profiling of comprehensive composition in compound herbal injections: An NMR approach applied on Shenmai injection

INTRODUCTION

Compound herbal injections (CHIs) can be regarded as a significant innovation in the modernisation of herbal medicine. Therefore, improving the quality control level of CHIs has always been an active research topic in traditional herbal medicine.

OBJECTIVES

In this study, Shenmai injection was used as a representative sample for investigating the ability of proton nuclear magnetic resonance (¹ H NMR) in the quality evaluation of CHIs.

METHODS

A quantitative ¹ H NMR method was developed to simultaneously determine the contents of total ginsenosides, polysorbate 80, and 20 primary metabolites in Shenmai injection. Multivariate statistical analysis was combined to compare differences between samples from different manufacturers.

RESULTS

It was found that the combined measurement uncertainty of each component is less than 1.61%, which demonstrates the reliability of the method. Furthermore, the components determined by this method account for up to 92.64% of the total solids, which is an unprecedented success in the analysis of Shenmai injection. In the end, the method was applied to the quality comparison of Shenmai injection from six manufacturers. The results showed that the differences among the samples from the six manufacturers were reflected in multiple types of components.

CONCLUSION

This study fully demonstrates the superiority of the quantitative ¹ H NMR method in comprehensive composition profiling of CHIs, which is conducive to improving the quality control level of Shenmai injection. Further, the present study can be used as a reference study for the research on the quality and safety of CHIs.

Advances in analytical techniques and quality control of traditional Chinese medicine injections

Traditional Chinese medicine injections (TCMIs) are a new pharmaceutical form in the modernization of traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs). Its efficacy is rapid, the curative effect is improved, and is widely used in critical and acute diseases, complicated and severe diseases, and other treatment. However, with the broad applications of TCMIs, clinical adverse reactions frequently occur, and safety problems become more prominent. Therefore, the quality control of TCMIs is essential. Chemical analysis methods and biological analysis methods are widely used in the quality control of TCMIs. This article describes the current status of TCMIs, the analytical techniques, and methods currently used, and the quality control of TCMIs. A summary of the advantages and disadvantages of the current analysis methods is presented. An overview of the quality control of TCMIs is introduced. In addition, emerging techniques of the quality control of TCMIs are introduced.

Danshen-Chuanxiongqin Injection attenuates cerebral ischemic stroke by inhibiting neuroinflammation via the TLR2/ TLR4-MyD88-NF-κB Pathway in tMCAO mice

Danshen-Chuanxiongqin Injection (DCI) is a commonly used traditional Chinese medicine for the treatment of cerebral ischemic stroke in China. However, its underlying mechanisms remain completely understood. The current study was designed to explore the protective mechanisms of DCI against cerebral ischemic stroke through integrating whole-transcriptome sequencing coupled with network pharmacology analysis. First, using a mouse model of cerebral ischemic stroke by transient middle cerebral artery occlusion (tMCAO), we found that DCI (4.10 mL·kg^-1) significantly alleviated cerebral ischemic infarction, neurological deficits, and the pathological injury of hippocampal and cortical neurons in mice. Next, the whole-transcriptome sequencing was performed on brain tissues. The cerebral ischemia disease (CID) network was constructed by integrating transcriptome sequencing data and cerebrovascular disease-related genes. The results showed CID network was imbalanced due to tMCAO, but a recovery regulation was observed after DCI treatment. Pathway analysis of the key genes with recovery efficiency showed that the neuroinflammation signaling pathway was highly enriched, while the TLR2/TLR4-MyD88-NF-κB pathway was predicted to be affected. Consistently, the in vivo validation experiments confirmed that DCI exhibited protective effects against cerebral ischemic stroke by inhibiting neuroinflammation via the TLR2/TLR4-MyD88-NF-κB pathway. More interestingly, DCI markedly suppressed the neutrophils infiltrated into the brain parenchyma via the choroid plexus route and showed anti-neuroinflammation effects. In conclusion, our results provide dependable evidence that inhibiting neuroinflammation via the TLR2/TLR4-MyD88-NF-κB pathway is the main mechanism of DCI against cerebral ischemic stroke in mice.

A novel critical control point and chemical marker identification method for the multi-step process control of herbal medicines via NMR spectroscopy and chemometrics

Herbal medicines have played a vital role in maintaining the health of the world population in the past thousands of years, and have proved to be an effective therapy. It is important to improve our understanding of the effects of the multi-step processing in herbal medicines on the chemical changes to ensure product quality. A proton nuclear paramagnetic resonance (¹H NMR)-based evaluation strategy was developed for an efficient process variation exploration and diversified metabolite identification. In this study, 48 process intermediates from 6 commercial batches of the multi-step manufacturing chain of Danshen processing were obtained. Hierarchical classification analysis (HCA) tree based on ¹H NMR spectra clustered the samples according to the processing steps, which indicates that ¹H NMR has the potential capability for critical control point identification based on its adequate information of the organic compounds. Then, principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) were applied to distinguish the major metabolite differences between the intermediates before and after the critical control point. In this case, the alkali-isolation and acid-dissolution method was recognized as the most critical process in the multi-step chain of Danshen extract manufacturing. Potential metabolites with the larger amplitude of variation and contributing the most to the discrimination were found to be potential quality markers by S-plot, including several previously undetected amino acids. The results in this study are consistent with previous research studies and reference experiments conducted with other analytical tools. Taken together, they prove that ¹H NMR with chemometrics is a very effective process quality control tool to provide comprehensive information on the chemical changes during the processing of herbal medicines, and help with the identification of critical control points and potential critical quality markers.

NMR and chemometric-based critical control point and chemical marker identification for the multi-step process control of herbal medicines.