Comprehensive chemical profiling and quantification of Shexiang Xintongning tablets by integrating liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

Shexiang Xintongning tablet (SXXTN) is a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) preparation for the treatment of coronary heart disease (CHD) angina pectoris. However, due to the complexity of the compounds in SXXTN, the active chemical components responsible for the therapeutic effect are still ambiguous. The purpose of our study was to characterize the chemical profile of SXXTN and quantify the representative chemicals. The high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with time-of-flight mass spectrometry (HPLC-QTOF MS) method and gas chromatograph coupled with mass spectrometry (GC–MS) method were utilized to identify the chemical constituents of SXXTN. A total of 140 compounds including alkaloids, ginsenosides, organic acids, esters, triterpenes, phthalides and amino acid were identified in accordance with their retention times, accurate masses and characteristic MS/MS fragment patterns. Forty-four volatile components were characterized by GC–MS through NIST database matching. In the further research of quantitative analysis, 40 non-volatile compounds and 17 volatile compounds were determined and successfully applied for detecting in 7 batches of SXXTN samples by high performance liquid chromatography coupled with triple-quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-QQQ MS) and gas chromatograph coupled with triple-quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry (GC-QQQ MS) in multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode, respectively. The quantitative methods were verified in linearity, precision, repeatability stability and recovery. The above results indicated that the established method was practical and reliable for synthetical quality evaluation of SXXTN. In addition, our study might supplement the chemical evidence for disclosing the material basis of its therapeutic effects.