[Determination of five effective components in medicinal material of Tripterygium by UPLC-ESI-MS/MS]

This paper is aimed to develop a method for the determination of five effective components in medicinal material of Tripterygium using ultra performance liquid chromalography coupled with electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry(UPLC-ESI-MS/MS), which then was used to study their contents in raw materials from different areas and different sources.The separation was performed on a Waters ACQUITY UPLC-CSH-C18S column(2.1 mm×100 mm,1.7 μm), usingacetonitrile-0.2% ammonium form ateaqueous solutionas mobile phase. The target components were detected in multiple-reaction monitoring(MRM) mode by mass spectrometry with electrospray ionization (ESI) source operated in positive ionization mode. The quantitative results showed that good linearity was achieved in their respective linear ranges and fine determination coefficient (r > 0.997 8),and the overall recoveries ranged from 96.72%-103.2% with the RSD ranging from 1.0%-2.4%.The method is sensitive and accurate, and suitable for the effective components quantification in medicinal material of Tripterygium; contents of five effective components from different sources vary significantly, so the quality and safety of medicinal material of Tripterygium needs to be improved. It is very important to control the quality with multi-index for clinic safety.