Chemical Fingerprint for Identification and Quality Control of Saccharides in Danhong Injection Based on HPLC-ELSD with Chemometrics

Chemical fingerprinting has been widely used for the quality control of complex natural products including traditional Chinese medicines and botanical drugs. However, there is still lack of appropriate method to monitor the batch-to-batch consistency of hydrophilic constituents, such as saccharides and oligosaccharides. In the present study, we developed a novel approach based on high performance liquid chromatography with evaporative light scattering detector(HPLC-ELSD) for establishing saccharide fingerprinting of Danhong Injection(DHI), which is a widely used botanical drug for treating cardiovascular diseases. Major saccharides in DHI were isolated and four compounds including fructose, glucose and two oligosaccharides were identified. The structures of two novel saccharides named glycerol-1-O-galactfpyranosyl-(1→4)-O-arabinofuranoside, and glycerol-1-O-galactpyranosyl-(1→4) [O-arabinfuranosyl-(1→3)]-O-arabinofuranoside were confirmed by NMR, HR-ESI-MS and GC-MS for the first time. The establishment approach was successfully applied to distinguishing 12 batches of DHI from other botanical drugs with the aid of principle component analysis as well as to evaluating batch-to-batch consistency with the help of calculating similarity of fingerprints. Our findings indicate that the chemical fingerprint of saccharides can be a useful tool for the quality control of complex natural products.