Xie Jing, Zhang Ai-Hua, Sun Hui, Yan Guang-Li, Wang Xi-Jun
Sino-America Chinmedomics Technology Collaboration Center, National TCM Key Laboratory of Serum Pharmacochemistry, Metabolomics Laboratory, Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis, Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine Heping Road 24 Harbin 150040 China
RSC Adv. 2018 Jan 3;8(2):812-824. doi: 10.1039/c7ra09475b. eCollection 2018 Jan 2.
Natural products are the most representative form of conventional therapy as compared to any other traditional or alternative medicine systems. They have numerous active components, either primary or secondary metabolites, which are associated with the diverse, intricate, and distinct characteristics of natural products and result in various pharmacological effects in clinic. However, some problems are associated with research on herb quality, which is the core of the drug industry, and restrict the development of this field to a certain extent. Quality-markers (Q-markers), a novel concept for quality assessment, open up a new avenue for promotion of healthy development of traditional medicine industry and improvement of the quality standard system to enhance traditional medicine or product quality standards. In this study, we first summarized the main factors affecting the quality of traditional medicines and natural products and importance for safety and then presented the concept of background and relevant factors of Q-markers. Moreover, the modern science technology and related methods used to identify the chemical composition have been discussed. Especially, based on the systematic analysis and discussion of the basic properties and clinical features of natural products, we have discussed new trends and effective strategies for identifying relevant Q-markers from herbs and probed the future research directions and challenges.
与任何其他传统或替代医学体系相比，天然产物是传统疗法最具代表性的形式。它们含有众多活性成分，无论是初级还是次级代谢产物，这些成分与天然产物多样、复杂且独特的特性相关，并在临床上产生各种药理作用。然而，草药质量研究存在一些问题，而草药质量是制药行业的核心，在一定程度上限制了该领域的发展。质量标志物（Q-标志物）作为一种质量评估的新概念，为促进传统医药产业健康发展和完善质量标准体系以提高传统医药或产品质量标准开辟了一条新途径。在本研究中，我们首先总结了影响传统药物和天然产物质量的主要因素及其对安全性的重要性，然后介绍了Q-标志物的背景概念和相关因素。此外，还讨论了用于鉴定化学成分的现代科学技术和相关方法。特别是，基于对天然产物基本性质和临床特征的系统分析与讨论，我们探讨了从草药中鉴定相关Q-标志物的新趋势和有效策略，并探究了未来的研究方向和挑战。
