Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometric method for determination of the anti-inflammatory compound vicenin-2 in the leaves of L. ericoides Mart

This paper reports a rapid and sensitive method for determination of the anti-inflammatory compound vicenin-2 in L. ericoides Mart. using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Separation of the compound of interest was performed on a VP-ODS(18) (150 x 2 mm, Shimadzu, Japan) column and a pre-column packed with GPV-ODS C(18) (5 x 2 mm, Sigma-Aldrich, USA) with acetonitrile-water (15:85) mobile phase containing 2% acetic acid using isocratic flow at 0.5 mL/min for 2 min. Multiple-reaction monitoring of vicenin-2 was performed using electrospray positive ionization. The linear calibration curves were generated using a concentration range of 5-2500 ng/mL with correlation coefficients >0.99. The values of limit of detection and limit of quantitation were found to be 1 and 5 ng/mL, respectively. The method developed based on LC-ESIMS/MS is advantageous because it permits the rapid and selective detection of vicenin-2. Furthermore, the method can be easily applied to the routine analysis of vicenin-2 in plant extracts using a minimal amount of sample.