Immobilized magnetic beads based multi-target affinity selection coupled with high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry for screening anti-diabetic compounds from a Chinese medicine "Tang-Zhi-Qing".

We developed an approach for screening bioactive compounds from botanical drug using multiple target-immobilized magnetic beads coupled with high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. This novel approach was called magnetic beads based multi-target affinity selection-mass spectrometry (MT-ASMS). It can enrich and identify different types of ligands from mixture extracts. Multiple targets (maltase, invertase, lipase) were immobilized on the magnetic beads by covalent linkage using 1-(3-dimethyl-aminopropyl)-3-ethyl-carbodiimide (EDC) and N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) as reaction reagents, respectively. The properties of enzyme conjugated magnetic beads were characterized using transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffractometer and vibration sample magnetometer. Several factors including pH, ion strength, incubation time and temperature were optimized using three known ligands (caffeic acid, ferulic acid, and hesperidin). The established MT-ASMS approach was applied to screening for ligands from a Chinese medicine "Tang-Zhi-Qing", which was used to treat type II diabetes in China. Seven bound compounds were identified via liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC/MS). Five active compounds including 2,3,4,6-tetra-O-galloyl-D-glucose, 1,2,3,4-tetra-O-galloyl-D-glucose, 1,2,3,4,6-penta-O-galloyl-d-glucose, quercetin-3-O-β-D-glucuronide and quercetin-3-O-β-D-glucoside were identified and their activities were validated by conventional inhibitory assay. Our findings suggested that the proposed approach is efficient in screening compounds with multiple activities from extracts of botanical drugs.