UHPLC-MS for the analytical characterization of traditional Chinese medicines

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been playing a very important role in health protection and disease control for thousands of years. The therapeutic efficacy of TCMs is based on the combined action of a mixture of phytochemical constituents. Because of the chemical diversity and the dynamic concentration range, analysis of TCMs remains a huge challenge. The large-scale analyses of TCMs are bound to advancements in ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) technology that have emerged in parallel with the development of mass spectrometry (MS). UHPLC-MS was rapidly accepted by the analytical community and is gradually being applied to TCMs. This review describes the applications of UHPLC-MS in TCM research. We give an overview of the latest applications of UHPLC-MS to natural product analysis in complex TCMs, highlighting its advantages with certain characteristic examples.