An approach to comparative analysis of chromatographic fingerprints for assuring the quality of botanical drugs

The present study was focused on developing the chemometric methods for analysis of the chromatographic fingerprint to control the quality of botanical drugs, which has gained attention in Asia and other countries. We developed a novel approach to generate a set of fingerprint features, called Fisher components (FCs) that were extracted from the chromatographic fingerprint. The method greatly reduces the dimensionality of the fingerprint vector, and the resulting FCs still retain most discriminatory information of the original fingerprint. Choosing an example of relevance to contemporary botanical drugs, we applied the FCs to a set of Shenmai injection samples. We successfully identified the manufacturers of the samples using two classifiers, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) based on the FCs. We also applied a similarity assessment together with the visual analysis using the FCs to exam the products from different manufacturers. We found that the lot-to-lot consistency of products can be accurately determined using the FCs. Finally, we demonstrated that the application of chemometric methods for chromatographic fingerprinting offers reliability to detect suspected fraud samples. In summary, we demonstrated that the presented approaches could be useful to determine the identity, consistency, and authenticity of Shenmai injection through chromatographic fingerprinting. The methods are equally applicable to other botanical drugs.     

硅基交联聚酸正丁酯反相HPLC固定相的研究

采用硅胶表面直接交联聚合法，制备了硅基交联聚丙烯酸正丁酯反相高效液相色谱固定相。用红外、扫描电镜和元素分析等方法对固定对进行了表征。考察了固定相对含氧芳烃衍生物的分离。     

Synthesis and biological evaluation of spongistatin/altohyrtin analogues: E-ring dehydration and C46 side-chain truncation

Simplified analogues of the potent antimitotic marine macrolide spongistatin 1/altohyrtin A were synthesised and evaluated as growth inhibitory agents against a range of human tumour cell lines, including Taxol-resistant strains, revealing that E-ring dehydration leads to enhanced cytotoxicity at the low picomolar level while truncation of the side-chain at C46 results in a drastic decrease in activity.     

Rapid PCR in a continuous flow device

Continuous flow polymerase chain reaction (CFPCR) devices are compact reactors suitable for microfabrication and the rapid amplification of target DNAs. For a given reactor design, the amplification time can be reduced simply by increasing the flow velocity through the isothermal zones of the device; for flow velocities near the design value, the PCR cocktail reaches thermal equilibrium at each zone quickly, so that near ideal temperature profiles can be obtained. However, at high flow velocities there are penalties of an increased pressure drop and a reduced residence time in each temperature zone for the DNA/reagent mixture, that potentially affect amplification efficiency. This study was carried out to evaluate the thermal and biochemical effects of high flow velocities in a spiral, 20 cycle CFPCR device. Finite element analysis (FEA) was used to determine the steady-state temperature distribution along the micro-channel and the temperature of the DNA/reagent mixture in each temperature zone as a function of linear velocity. The critical transition was between the denaturation (95 degrees C) and renaturation (55 degrees C-68 degrees C) zones; above 6 mm s(-1) the fluid in a passively-cooled channel could not be reduced to the desired temperature and the duration of the temperature transition between zones increased with increased velocity. The amplification performance of the CFPCR as a function of linear velocity was assessed using 500 and 997 base pair (bp) fragments from lambda-DNA. Amplifications at velocities ranging from 1 mm s(-1) to 20 mm s(-1) were investigated. The 500 bp fragment could be observed in a total reaction time of 1.7 min (5.2 s cycle(-1)) and the 997 bp fragment could be detected in 3.2 min (9.7 s cycle(-1)). The longer amplification time required for detection of the 997 bp fragment was due to the device being operated at its enzyme kinetic limit (i.e., Taq polymerase deoxynucleotide incorporation rate).     

A study of thoria on the surface of gamma-Al2O3

The dispersion of thoria on the surface of gamma-Al2O3 and the surface properties of ThO2/gamma-Al2O3 samples, as well as the influence of the loading amount of thoria on the reduction behavior of copper oxide species, have been studied using XRD, XPS, FTIR, and TPR. The results indicate that the dispersion capacity of thoria, like that of ceria, is much lower than for two other tetravalent metal oxides, zirconia and titania, and the surface adsorption amount of the carbonyl compound and H2O slightly increases with increasing thoria loading. The different thoria loadings can influence the reduction behavior of the dispersed copper oxide by comparing the TPR results of CuO/ThO2/gamma-Al2O3 samples. In addition, the lower dispersion capacities of thoria and ceria on gamma-Al2O3 are tentatively discussed by considering the structural stability of the two oxides.     

亚氨基二乙酸—硅胶键合相的合成及其在核苷酸分析中的应用

以大孔微球硅胶（３０ｎｍ，８μｍ）为基体，经γ－氨丙基三乙氧基硅烷活化与间隔臂氯代环氧丙烷反应后，再与螯合剂亚氨基二乙酸键合，后者与铜离子（Ⅱ）螯合后，构成定位金属离子亲和色谱固定相。用磷酸盐缓冲溶液（ｐＨ＝７．０）作流动相，经紫外吸收检测（２６０ｎｍ）对核苷酸混合物进行了高效液相色谱分析，取得较满意的结果。     

CHRONIC METABOLIC MEASUREMENTS OF NORMAL BRAIN TISSUE RESPONSE TO PHOTODYNAMIC THERAPY

The metabolic response of normal rat brain to photodynamic therapy (PDT) was studied over a 1 week interval using in vivo 31P-NMR spectroscopy. Rats injected with 12.5 mg/kg Photofrin II were submitted to brain photoactivation 48 h after drug administration with either 140 or 70 J/cm2 light (630 +/- 1 nm) from an Argon dye laser. Control studies, animals not given drug or light, animals submitted only to brain illumination without drug, and animals given drug but no light, were also performed. The data revealed a transient metabolic degradation; a decrease in the ratio of beta-nucleotriphosphate to inorganic phosphate (P less than 0.001) at 24 h after PDT treatment was followed by a return to pretreatment spectral values. Brain tissue alkalosis was also noted, with significant (P less than 0.05) differences in brain tissue pH detected at 72 h post treatment between 70 J/cm2 PDT vs control studies and at 1 week post treatment between 140 J/cm2 vs 70 J/cm2, 140 J/cm2 vs no light-no drug and 140 J/cm2 vs drug only. The data suggest that there is no difinitive metabolic marker from 31P-NMR spectroscopy that can identify necrotic brain tissue caused by PDT. Phosphorus-31 NMR data are also presented which suggest that PDT damage to brain is not solely the result of microvascular occlusion causing ischemic necrosis.     

Optical Properties of Model Compounds of Polyaniline

The UV and visible spectra of six model compounds were studied. These compounds can be considered as models of polyaniline in the reduced, cation radical, partially oxidized and oxidized forms. After treatment of a mixture of equal molar quantities of the reduced form (DPPD) and the oxidized form (QDIM) with acid, the following reaction was observed: DPPD(I)+QDIM(III)+2H⁺=2DPPD⁺(II) After similar treatment of the partially oxidized form (V) with acid, the radical cation salt formed. The UV and visible spectra of polyaniline in the reduced form, oxidized form and conductive form are similar to the spectra of DPPD, QDIM and DPPD⁺ or radical cation salt of V respectively. We propose that the polyaniline synthesized by chemical oxidation of aniline consists of oxidized and reduced repeat units. Upon protonation a redox reaction (or electron rearrangement) occurs and forms delocalized radical cations (polarons) in the polymer chain which are highly conductive.     

Solution-phase preparation of a 560-compound library of individual pure mappicine analogues by fluorous mixture synthesis

Solution-phase mixture synthesis has efficiency advantages and favorable reaction kinetics. Applications of this technique, however, have been discouraged by the difficulty in obtaining individual, pure final products by using conventional separation and identification processes. Introduced here is a new strategy for mixture synthesis that addresses the separation and identification problems. Members of a series of organic substrates are paired with a series of fluorous tags of different chain lengths. The tagged starting materials are then mixed and taken through a multistep reaction process. Fluorous chromatography is used to demix the tagged product mixtures on the basis of the fluorine content of the tags to provide the individual pure components of the mixture, which are detagged to release the final products. The utility of fluorous mixture synthesis is demonstrated by the preparation of a 560-membered library of analogues of the natural product mappicine. A seven-component mixture is carried through a four-step mixture synthesis (two one-pot and two parallel steps) to incorporate two additional points of diversity onto the tetracyclic core. Methods for analysis and purification of the intermediates are established for the quality control of the mixture synthesis.     

大孔交联甲基丙烯酸缩水甘油酯共聚物的合成及其结构性能研究(Ⅰ)

甲基丙烯酸缩水甘油酯（GMA）为单体，三烯丙基氰尿酸酯（TAC）为交联剂，在致孔剂甲苯、正庚烷存在下，用悬浮聚合法制得一系列大孔共聚物（GT）。测定了共聚物的孔结构性能，讨论了不同交联剂及致孔剂用量和配比对共聚物结构的影响，并初步讨论了特大孔共聚物的形成机理。