Current development of rapid high-throughout determination technology for total components of traditional Chinese medicines and formula and synthetic immunity chip method

Abstract

The qualitative and quantitative analysis on traditional Chinese medicine and formula components can be made by chemical and instrumental analysis methods. Of both, the instrumental analysis methods play a dominant role, including HPLC, HPLC-MS, HPLC-NMR, GC, GC-MS, biochemical and biological effect. But because traditional Chinese medicines and formula have complicated components, chemical methods are so unspecific that they shall be used less or with caution. While instrumental analysis methods are so specific that they are appropriate for analyzing complicated single component. The analysis techniques for multiple components of traditional Chinese medicines and formula focus on fingerprints, but all of these analysis techniques are limited by the pre-requisite of separation and the lack of general-purpose detectors and therefore being hard to realize the determination of all components of traditional Chinese medicines and formula. In the natural world, however, organisms identify native and alien components through specificity and non-specificity of clusters decided by antigens and antibodies. For example, components of traditional Chinese medicines are directly or indirectly synthesized into antigens and injected into animals, in order to generate specific antibodies and then collect cross reaction information of these components to specific antibodies. As for components without cross reaction, their contents shall be directly read out on the basis of the inhibition rate curve of competitive reaction for specificity of antigens and antibodies. Besides, a cross inhibition rate matrix shall be established first, and them a multiple regression linear equation between cross component concentration or concentration logarithm and inhibition rate by labeling the immunity competitive reaction between antibodies and haptens of traditional Chinese medicine and compound components, and then solved to obtain concentration of each component. The two results are combined to establish the synthetic immunity chip method for traditional Chinese medicine and formula components.