Liang Yi-Zeng, Wang Wei-Ping
Research Center of Modernization of Chinese Medicines Central South University Changsha 410083, China.
Chimia (Aarau). 2011;65(12):944-51. doi: 10.2533/chimia.2011.944.
The holistic system of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is reflected by the integrity of the ingredients contained in herbal medicines, which creates a challenge in establishing quality control standards for raw materials and the standardization of finished herbal drugs because no single component contributes to the total efficacy. Thus, the chromatographic fingerprinting technique of TCM has proved to be a comprehensive strategy for assessing the intact quality of herbal medicine, since the origin of the herbal medicines could be identified and classified based on so-called phytoequivalence. On the other hand, chromatographic fingerprinting is essentially a high-throughput technique and an integral tool to explore the complexity of herbal medicines. In order to further control the comprehensive quality of TCMs, some strategies are proposed to trace the chemical changes of chromatographic fingerprints both in product processing and/or after their administration by modern chromatographic techniques and chemometrics. Combined with the techniques developed in systems biology, it seems also possible to reveal the working mechanism of TCMs and to further control their intrinsic quality.
中药（TCM）的整体系统体现在草药所含成分的完整性上，这给建立原材料质量控制标准和成品草药标准化带来了挑战，因为没有单一成分能贡献全部疗效。因此，中药色谱指纹图谱技术已被证明是评估草药整体质量的综合策略，因为可以根据所谓的植物等效性来识别和分类草药的来源。另一方面，色谱指纹图谱本质上是一种高通量技术，是探索草药复杂性的不可或缺的工具。为了进一步控制中药的综合质量，提出了一些策略，通过现代色谱技术和化学计量学来追踪色谱指纹图谱在产品加工过程中和/或给药后的化学变化。结合系统生物学中发展的技术，似乎也有可能揭示中药的作用机制并进一步控制其内在质量。
