Simultaneous determination of ten bioactive constituents of Sanjie Zhentong Capsule in rat plasma by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry and its application to a pharmacokinetic study

- Ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) was explored for the simultaneous determination of ten bioactive constituents of Sanjie Zhentong Capsule (SZC), for the first time, in biological matrices.
- In this study, we firstly reported the pharmacokinetic characteristics of pterostilbene and 7,4'-dihydroxyflavone in rat plasma after oral administration of SZC.
- A specific and rapid quantitative LC-MS/MS method for the determination of ten bioactive constituents of SZC was developed, and applied to a pharmacokinetic application.

Sanjie Zhentong capsule, a well-known traditional Chinese medicine prescription, are used for the treatment of endometriosis-related diseases. In this study, a simple, rapid and sensitive ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) method was developed for the simultaneous determination of ten bioactive constituents, including peimine, peiminine, peimisine, loureirin A, loureirin B, 7,4′-dihydroxyflavone, pterostilbene, ginsenoside Rg1, ginsenoside Rb1, and notoginsenoside R1 in rat plasma after oral administration of Sanjie Zhentong capsule. The sample preparations for protein removal was accomplished using a simple methanol precipitation method. The analytes were completely separated from the endogenous compounds on an Agilent Poroshell 120 SB-C18 column (4.6 mm × 150 mm, 2.7 μm) using an isocratic elution with methanol − 0.1% formic acid aqueous (4/1, v/v) as a mobile phase. The single-run analysis time was as short as 14.0 min. The inter-day and intra-day precision of the quality control samples exhibited relative standard deviations (RSD) <9.5% and the accuracy values ranged from −8.6% to 15.0%. The lower limits of quantification (LLOQ) were 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 5, 10, 10 and 20 ng/mL for peimine, peiminine, peimisine, loureirin A, loureirin B, 7,4′-dihydroxyflavone, pterostilbene, ginsenoside Rg1, ginsenoside Rb1, notoginsenoside R1, respectively. The analytical method was successfully applied to a pharmacokinetic study of the multi-components after oral administration of Sanjie Zhentong Capsule in rats.