Sensitive and reliable multianalyte quantitation of herbal medicine in rat plasma using dynamic triggered multiple reaction monitoring

• A dynamic triggered MRM (DtMRM) method was developed for multi-analyte quantitation of herbal medicines in vivo.
• tMRM maximizes the dwell time in the quantitation phase and is reliable for identity confirmation.
• DtMRM approach provides much higher sensitivity and reproducibility than conventional MRM.

There is a growing need both clinically and experimentally to improve the determination of the blood levels of multiple chemical constituents in herbal medicines. The conventional multiple reaction monitoring (cMRM), however, is not well suited for multi-component determination and could not provide qualitative information for identity confirmation. Here we apply a dynamic triggered MRM (DtMRM) algorithm for the quantification of 20 constituents in an herbal prescription Bu-Zhong-Yi-Qi-Tang (BZYQT) in rat plasma. Dynamic MRM (DMRM) dramatically reduced the number of concurrent MRM transitions that are monitored during each MS scan. This advantage has been enhanced with the addition of triggered MRM (tMRM) for simultaneous confirmation, which maximizes the dwell time in the primary MRM quantitation phase, and also acquires sufficient MRM data to create a composite product ion spectrum. By allowing optimized collision energy for each product ion and maximizing dwell times, tMRM is significantly more sensitive and reliable than conventional product ion scanning. The DtMRM approach provides much higher sensitivity and reproducibility than cMRM.