College of Pharmacy, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, 210023, China.
School of Basic Medicine, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, 210023, China.
Sci Rep. 2019 Nov 13;9(1):16666. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-52963-3.
In this study, a fingerprint-activity relationship between chemical fingerprints and hepatoprotective activity was established to evaluate the quality of salt-treated Apocyni Veneti Folium (AVF). Characteristic fingerprints of AVF samples exposed to different concentrations of salt were generated by ultrafast liquid chromatography tandem triple time-of-flight mass/mass spectrometry (UFLC-Triple TOF-MS/MS), and a similarity analysis was performed based on common characteristic peaks by hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA). Then, the hepatoprotective activity of AVF against CCl-induced acute liver damage in mice was investigated by assessing biochemical markers and histopathology, which showed that a high dose of AVF exposed to low levels of salt stress produced a marked amelioration of hepatic damage compared with the other salt-treated AVF. Finally, fingerprint-activity relationship modeling, which was capable of discovering the bioactive markers used in the quality evaluation, was investigated by the chemical fingerprints and the hepatoprotective activities utilizing multivariate statistical analysis, gray correlation analysis (GCA) and bivariate correlation analysis (BCA). The results showed that the accumulation of polyphenols, such as flavonoids and phenolic acids, in AVF subjected to low levels of salt stress could result in the effective scavenging of free radicals. Therefore, the present study may provide a powerful strategy to holistically evaluate the quality of salt-treated AVF in combination with chemical fingerprint and bioactivity evaluation.
在这项研究中，建立了一种化学指纹图谱与肝保护活性之间的指纹图谱-活性关系，以评估盐处理的牛蒡叶（AVF）的质量。通过超快速液相串联三重飞行时间质谱/质谱联用仪（UFLC-三重 TOF-MS/MS）生成 AVF 样品暴露于不同浓度盐的特征指纹图谱，并通过层次聚类分析（HCA）基于共同特征峰进行相似度分析。然后，通过评估生化标志物和组织病理学来研究 AVF 对 CCl 诱导的急性肝损伤的肝保护活性，结果表明，与其他盐处理的 AVF 相比，暴露于低水平盐胁迫的高剂量 AVF 可显著改善肝损伤。最后，利用多元统计分析、灰度关联分析（GCA）和双变量相关分析（BCA），对化学指纹图谱和肝保护活性进行指纹图谱-活性关系建模，以发现用于质量评价的生物活性标志物。结果表明，AVF 中多酚（如类黄酮和酚酸）的积累可能导致低水平盐胁迫下自由基的有效清除。因此，本研究可能为结合化学指纹图谱和生物活性评价综合评估盐处理的 AVF 质量提供了一种有力策略。
