Department of Chemistry, Tamkang University, New Taipei City, Taiwan.
Department of Biochemistry, Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan.
Phytochem Anal. 2019 Nov;30(6):720-726. doi: 10.1002/pca.2852. Epub 2019 Jul 16.
Dragon blood is a deep-red plant resin which has been used as folk medicine for more than a thousand years. It can be produced from at least four entirely different plant families: Asparagaceae, Arecaceae, Chamaesyce, and Fabaceae. Current pharmacopeia states that the only "authentic" source of dragon blood is the palm tree, Daemonorops draco.
The present study aims to find a high-throughput method to screen and identify the plant sources of commercial dragon blood products.
A matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) based method for rapid screening of dracorhodin in commercial dragon blood samples was established in this study.
Well-resolved peaks of dracorhodin in spectra were observed in the crude extracts of samples. Dragon blood samples from two other plant species, Dracaena cinnabari and Dracaena cochinchinensis, were also examined. Their indicator compounds, loureirin A and B, were detected in these plants.
A MALDI-TOF based method for preliminarily examination of commercial dragon blood samples is reported here. In contrast to MALDI-TOF, liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS) is a time-consuming and costly method, not ideal for routine and large-scale screening of commercial samples.
龙血是一种深红色的植物树脂，已被用作民间药物超过一千年。它可以来自至少四个完全不同的植物科：天门冬科、棕榈科、大戟科和豆科。目前的药典规定，龙血的唯一“正宗”来源是龙舌兰属植物。
本研究旨在寻找一种高通量的方法来筛选和鉴定商业龙血产品的植物来源。
本研究建立了一种基质辅助激光解吸电离飞行时间质谱（MALDI-TOF MS）快速筛选商业龙血样品中血根碱的方法。
在样品的粗提取物中观察到血根碱的谱峰得到了很好的分辨。还检查了来自另外两种植物，血竭和海南龙血树的龙血样品。在这些植物中检测到它们的指标化合物 loureirin A 和 B。
本文报道了一种基于 MALDI-TOF 的商业龙血样品初步检测方法。与 MALDI-TOF 相比，液相色谱-质谱（LC-MS）是一种耗时且昂贵的方法，不适合商业样品的常规和大规模筛选。
