A comprehensive profiling and identification of liquiritin metabolites in rats using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with linear ion trap–orbitrap mass spectrometer

Abstract

Liquiritin (LQ), a main component of liquorice, exerts various biological activities. However, insufficient attentions have been paid to the metabolism study on this natural compound until now. Our present study was conducted to investigate the LQ metabolites in rats urine, faeces and plasma using UHPLC-LTQ-Orbitrap mass spectrometer in both positive and negative ion modes. Meanwhile, post-acquisition data-mining methods including high-resolution extracted ion chromatogram (HREIC), multiple mass defect filters (MMDFs), neutral loss fragments (NLFs) and diagnostic product ions (DPIs) were utilised to screen and identify LQ metabolites from HR-ESI-MS to ESI-MSⁿ stage. As a result, a total of 49 metabolites were detected and characterised unambiguously or tentatively. These metabolites were presumed to generate through glucuronidation, sulfation, deglucosylation, dehydrogenation, methylation, hydrogenation, hydroxylation, ring cleavage and their composite reactions. Our results not only provided novel and useful data to better understand the biological activities of LQ, but also indicated that the proposed strategy was reliable for a rapid discovery and identification drug-related constituents in vivo.

Keywords:

• Liquiritin
• metabolites
• UHPLC-LTQ-Orbitrap mass spectrometer
• data-mining methods

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Young and Creative Team for Talent Introduction of Shandong Province, Binzhou Medical University Scientific Research Fund for High-level Talents [2019KYQD06], Locality-University Cooperation Project of Yantai City [2019XDRHXMPT18], Ability Establishment of Sustainable Use for Valuable Chinese Medicine Resources [2060302].