Kum, Ka Yui; (2020) Herbal product's quality control using ¹H-NMR metabolomics approach – An example from Danshen (Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge.). Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Radix Salviae miltiorrhizae is the only source of Danshen in pharmacopoeias. For thousands of years, it has been used in China for vascular and pain-related diseases. The current major chemical standards for Danshen products are tanshinone IIA and salvianolic acid B (Zhou, Zuo and Chow, 2005). However, in some regions, Danshen substitutes including Salvia przewalskii Maxim, S. bowleyana Dunn, and S. sinica Migo have been used. Such local substitutes are often erroneously called Danshen (Li et al., 2008, 2013). About ten thousand tonnes of Danshen, Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge, achieved total revenue of around £54 million in 2015 (Translated from Chinese: Chinese Danshen market research and investment prospect from 2017 to 2023 forecast report, 2017). The global rise of Danshen-related products in different supply chains puts into question the consistency of product quality and the accuracy of information provided by suppliers. This project aims at using a metabolomics approach to understand the standard of Danshen products in the global market and establish a novel strategy to define the quality of herbal medicine products. This study project included three disciplines, which were chemistry, pharmacology and value chain analysis. The data obtained from these three disciplines were linked by principle component analysis to the correlation of its chemical compositions and pharmacological effects and its related supply chain. For value chain analysis, an extensive literature review, semi-structured interviews with key informants and non-participant observation in the fieldwork were used to investigate the structures of the supply chains and its influence on the quality of Danshen products. According to the supply chains investigated, simplifying the supply chain and fair-trade agreement benefits the quality consistency of Danshen materials. Taiwan local farmers struggled to sell their organic Danshen (≈ £23/kg) to pharmaceuticals. Taiwanese pharmaceutical company representatives highlighted that Danshen has always been the highest consumption, but they would source from China (≈ £1.6 to7.8/kg) because of the lower price. Some farmers would follow the traditional processing after harvesting which allows the roots fermenting several days before sun-drying. With this processing, the products had less tanshinones, but it did not show any effects on salvianolic acids in HPTLC and NMR. For the chemical composition variation of Danshen products, HPTLC, NMR and metal content analysis were used to understand the standard and the consistency of the market samples in the world. With sixty-two samples collected from different countries and sources, there were distinctive chemical differences between the samples from Vietnam and China as well as authenticated samples. In HPTLC and NMR, it showed the contents of salvianolic acids and tanshinones vary, and it did not relate to the size of the firm. In the metal analysis, two out of fifteen samples from Chinese online stores exceeded acceptable cadmium levels according to Chinese pharmacopoeia (0.3 and 0.67 mg/kg). For the pharmacology variation, the evaluation of the inhibition of H2O2 induced apoptosis and the inhibition of LPS induced NO production assays were used. In LPS induced NO production, only seven dried root samples (two authenticated and five from Vietnamese market) out of sixty-two samples exhibited inhibition of NO production in 100 ug/ml without cytotoxicity (10.28%~26.17%). Three samples from Chinese online stores obtained protective effect from H2O2 induced apoptosis.

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