Small Molecule Profiling Strategy with Modern Analytical Tools

Small molecule profiling for natural products is a challenging task because of the sample complexity and the analyses required. For example, ingredient profiling (to elucidate the active compounds from a particular plant), sample comparison (to understand point of origin and to prove authenticity), quantification and identification of target compounds for quality control purpose are all routinely required. Today, with the advances in technology, and a variety of analytical solutions available to tackle different analytical problems, the challenge resides on deciding which solution to use for which problem, and how to use them effectively to answer the analytical questions at hand quickly and effectively.

Here, we present a few application examples to demonstrate how to effectively use different analytical system solutions to natural product related problems. We show application examples that use UPLC/oaTOF MS^E/MarkerLynx for complex sample comparison, to solve problems such as point of origin, plant authentication, and commercial product authentication. We show application examples for ingredient profiling using a combination of analytical tools such as UPLC, GC, and UPSFC. The presentation also includes discussion about a natural product database, utility of the latest analytical tools (such as ion mobility), and show some of our latest analytical results for natural products.