[Determination of 15 functional components in sweet potato leaves by ultra high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry].

A method for the rapid determination of 15 functional components in sweet potato leaves by ultra high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) was established. The samples were extracted with 80% (v/v) methanol aqueous solution, and then separated on a C18 column (100 mm×2.1 mm, 1.8 µm) with gradient elution. The mobile phases were acetonitrile and 0.15% (v/v) formic acid aqueous solution. The multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode was used to detect the molecular ion peak of each component in electrospray ionization (ESI) source and negative ion scan mode. The results showed that the good linear relationships for the 15 components were obtained with correlation coefficients (r) ranging from 0.9995 to 0.9998. The recoveries of all the components ranged from 82.2% to 131.4% with relative standard deviations of 3.6%-8.3%. The method is simple, sensitive, and is suitable for the rapid analysis of the functional components in sweet potato leaves.

Low-cost humic acid-bonded silica as an effective solid-phase extraction sorbent for convenient determination of aflatoxins in edible oils.

Aflatoxins (AFs) are highly toxic, mutagenic, carcinogenic, and teratogenic secondary metabolites produced by the toxigenic fungi Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. AFs tend to contaminate a wide range of foods which is a serious and recurring food safety problem worldwide. Currently, immunoaffinity chromatography (IAC) has become the most conventional sample clean-up method for determining AFs in foodstuffs. However, IAC method is limited in the large-scale food analysis because it requires the use of expensive disposable cartridges and the IA procedure is time-consuming. Herein, to achieve the cost-effective determination of AFs in edible oils, we developed a promising solid-phase extraction (SPE) method based on commercially available humic acid-bonded silica (HAS) sorbent, followed by high performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) analysis. In HAS-SPE, AFs can be captured by the HAS sorbent with both hydrophobic and hydrophilic interactions, whereas the oil matrix was captured only with the hydrophobic interactions. The oil matrix can be sufficiently washed off with isopropanol, while the AFs were still retained on the SPE packing, thus achieving selective extraction of AFs and clean-up of oil matrices. Under the optimal conditions of HAS-SPE, satisfactory recoveries ranging from 82% to 106% for four AFs (B1, B2, G1, and G2) were achieved in various oil matrices, containing blended oil, tea oil, rapeseed oil, peanut oil, sunflower seed oil, corn oil, blended olive oil, rice oil, soybean oil, and sesame oil. Only minor matrix effects ranging from 99% to 105% for four AFs were observed. Moreover, the LODs of AFs between 0.012 and 0.035 µg/kg completely meet the regulatory levels fixed by the EU, China or other countries. The methodology was further validated for assaying the naturally contaminated peanut oils, and consistent results between the HAS-SPE and the referenced IAC were obtained. In addition, HAS-SPE can directly treat diluted oil sample without liquid-liquid extraction and is automatable, thus making it simple and convenient for the large-scale determination of AFs in edible oils. Using this method, we successfully detected four AFs in the naturally contaminated peanut oils, which is, to the best of our knowledge, the first report about the determination of AFs in edible oils using HA-based SPE.

Metabolic profiling study on potential toxicity and immunotoxicity-biomarker discovery in rats treated with cyclophosphamide using HPLC-ESI-IT-TOF-MS.

Despite the recent advances in understanding toxicity mechanism of cyclophosphamide (CTX), the development of biomarkers is still essential. CTX-induced immunotoxicity in rats by a metabonomics approach was investigated using high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with ion trap time-of-flight mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI-IT-TOF-MS). The rats were orally administered CTX (30 mg/kg/day) for five consecutive days, and on the fifth day samples of urine, thymus and spleen were collected and analyzed. A significant difference in metabolic profiling was observed between the CTX-treated group and the control group by partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), which indicated that metabolic disturbances of immunotoxicity in CTX-treated rats had occurred. One potential biomarker in spleen, three in urine and three in thymus were identified. It is suggested that the CTX-toxicity mechanism may involve the modulation of tryptophan metabolism, phospholipid metabolism and energy metabolism. This research can help to elucidate the CTX-influenced pathways at a low dose and can further help to indicate the patients' pathological status at earlier stages of toxicological progression after drug administration.

Metabonomic analysis of the toxic effects of TM208 in rat urine by HPLC-ESI-IT-TOF/MS.

4-Methylpiperazine-1-carbodithiocacid-3-cyano-3,3-diphenylpropyl ester hydrochloride (TM208) was a potential antitumor new drug with many preliminary studies in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. This study aims to determine whether TM208 elicits toxic effects by metabonomics for the first time. Sprague Dawley (SD) rats were exposured to TM208 at a single therapeutic dose (100mg/kg/d) for 5 days, metabolites of urine samples from both control and TM208-treated groups were analyzed using high performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization source in combination with hybrid ion trap and high-resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI-IT-TOF/MS). Metabolites such as aminoadipic acid, creatine, gluconic acid, cis-aconitic acid, succinic acid and pipecolic acid which changed significantly, were identified as potential biomarkers. These results suggest that the changes in urinary metabolites of rats after exposure to TM208 were mainly related to energy metabolism and amino acid metabolism, which may be helpful to further understand the mechanism of TM208 toxicity in rats and a new drug development.

Evaluation of the effect of TM208 on the activity of five cytochrome P450 enzymes using on-line solid-phase extraction HPLC-DAD: a cocktail approach.

A rapid, simple, and sensitive on-line solid-phase extraction HPLC-DAD method for simultaneous evaluation of the activity of five CYP450 isoforms (CYP1A2, CYP2C19, CYP2D6, CYP2E1 and CYP3A4) in vivo has been developed and validated. The five specific probe substrates include caffeine (1A2), metoprolol (2D6), dapsone (3A4), omeprazole (2C19) and chlorzoxazone (2E1). Automated pre-purification of plasma and enrichment of analytes were performed using a C18 on-line solid-phase extraction cartridge. After being eluted from the cartridge, the analytes and the internal standard antipyrine were separated on a C18 RP analytical column and analyzed by DAD. The method was validated to quantify the concentration ranges of 0.05-50.0 µg/ml for dapsone and omeprazole, 0.1-50.0 µg/ml for caffeine and 0.2-50.0 µg/ml for metoprolol and chlorzoxazone. The linearity (R(2)) for all analytes tested was exceeded 0.99. The intra-day precision ranged from 0.29 to 13% and the inter-day precision ranged from 5.0 to 15%, respectively. The intra-day and inter-day accuracy were between 86.7% and 113.6%. The extraction recoveries were in the range 82.8-109.9% for all the analytes and internal standard antipyrine. This method was successfully applied to evaluate the effects of TM208 on rat five CYP450 isoforms.

Determination of 4-methylpiperaine-1-carbodithioc acid 3-cyano-3,3-diphenylpropyl ester hydrochloride in rats' plasma by online-SPE-HPLC-DAD: application to a pharmacokinetic study.

A specific, simple, and fast online-solid-phase extraction-high performance liquid chromatography-diode array detector (SPE-HPLC-DAD) method was developed and validated to quantify 4-methylpiperaine-1-carbodithioc acid 3-cyano-3,3-diphenylpropyl ester hydrochloride (TM208) in small volume samples of rats' plasma for the first time. In this method, the 50-µL plasma sample was taken to perform protein precipitation with 75 µL methanol, and then 50 µL supernatant containing the target analytes was injected and concentrated automatically in a C18 solid-phase extraction (SPE) cartridge. After that the sample was separated on a C18 RP analytical column and analyzed by DAD. The run cycle time is 6.0 min for each sample, and the calibration curve over the range of 0.03 to 25.00 µg/mL has a good linear relationship (r > 0.9998). The recoveries of the quality control samples were all greater than 90%. The limit of detection and the lowest limit of quantification were 0.01 and 0.03 µg/mL, respectively. Finally, this method was successfully applied to a pharmacokinetic study of TM208 in rats.