Brian Murphy | Authors

An effective metabolite identification study should ideally include both qualitative and quantitative information that for both identifying metabolites, and determining the rate of clearance and the metabolic routes of the parent drug. Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) is considered the standard analytical technique for metabolite identification studies. To date, however, qualitative and quantitative information has always been obtained from two separation platforms: quadrupole time-of-flight (QTof) MS for the exact mass full-scan qualitative study, and tandem quadrupole MS for the multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) quantitative study. With advancements to QTof instrumentation, specifically, recent improvements in sensitivity and dynamic range, it is now possible to perform both qualitative and quantitative experiments on a single QTof mass spectrometer. This article describes a workflow that allows simultaneous qualitative and quantitative metabolite identification studies to be..

Both Chinese ginseng and Korean ginseng are similar plant species and undergo similar handling procedures when harvested and processed for sale. Despite their similarities, Korean ginseng commands a higher price than Chinese ginseng on the open market and is believed to produce different clinical effects than Chinese ginseng. Chinese researchers are now employing new techniques on the two varieties of ginseng to understand their chemical differences. HPLC/UV-based strategies for distinguishing the two types of ginseng have proven to be mostly ineffective due to lack of resolution. Using UltraPerformance liquid chromatography/orthogonal acceleration (oa)–TOF mass spectrometry and exact mass measurement, the authors developed a high-resolution method using multivariate statistical analysis for separating and identifying differences between Chinese ginseng and Korean ginseng at the molecular level.