ABSTRACT
Objective:To systematically identify the chemical constituents in extract of Baihu Jia Guizhi Tang (BHGZT) by ultra-fast liquid chromatography/triple time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry (UFLC-Triple-TOF-MS/MS). Method:Phenomenex C18 (3.0 mm×100 mm,2.6 μm) was eluted with acetonitrile (containing 0.1%formic acid) and 0.1%formic acid solution as the mobile phase in a gradient mode. The column temperature was set at 40℃,the flow rate was 0.3 mL·min-1,and the injection volume was 5 μL. High-resolution triple quadrupole flight mass spectrometry was adopted to test in both positive and negative modes. Formula finder function in peakview software was used to calculate the element composition of the compounds,and IDA explore function in the software was invoked to obtain secondary fragmentation ions of this mass number. And the compounds were identified based on literature data and the reference substances. Result:On the basis of the mass fragmentation regularity of accurate molecular weight, 35 compounds were identified in BHGZT,including 16 steroid saponins,6 triterpenoid saponins,7 flavonoids,and 4 organic acids and 2 others. Among them,10 components (timosaponin AⅢ,timosaponin I,timosaponin BⅢ,timosaponin BⅡ,new mangiferin,mangiferin,liquiritin apioside,liquiritin,glycyrrhizic acid and cinnamic acid) were confirmed by comparing with reference substances,and the sources of the compound were identified. Conclusion:UFLC-Triple-TOF-MS/MS can be used to characterize the chemical composition of BHGZT simply and quickly. Relevant researches provide references for the research of pharmacodynamic material basis,the quality control and the explanation of mechanism of action.