Progress on lipidomics analytical methods and their applications in studies of traditional Chinese medicines

Abstract

Lipids have been documented to play comprehensive and significant role in many biological processes. As a branch of metabolomics,lipidomics research mainly involves the analysis of the variation of lipid metabolism profiles under different physiologic,pathologic conditions or drug intervention,the discovery of key lipid biomarkers of a disease in lipid metabolic networks,and the study of the mechanism of action of lipid metabolic regulation during disease onset and progression,and drug treatment. Traditional Chinese medicines( TCMs)are characterized with integrated effects by multi-components,multi-targets and integrated effects. It is urgent to develop methods suitable for the study of complex TCMs to reveal the active constituents and integrated mechanism of action. Systems biology such as lipidomics provides valuable strategy and approach to illustrate the complex mechanisms of TCMs. In this paper,in order to provide technical references for TCMs,we have reviewed the analytical techniques applied in lipidomics and the applications of lipidomics in TCMs researches.