Abstract
A validated liquid chromatography (LC) method coupled with hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) has been established for investigating the fingerprint chromatograms of ten kinds of animal horns. The method showed good performances in terms of precision, repeatability, linearity, accuracy, and stability. The results showed that the LC fingerprint method coupled with HCA could be used to classify animal horns, which could make it simple and feasible to search substitution of precious horns.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine of the People's Republic of China (2004ZX04-2); Chinese Pharmacopoeia (2010 edition) Revision Project (NO. TS-48) of Chinese Pharmacopoeia Committee; 2009 Program for New Century Excellent Talents by the Ministry of Education; 2009 Program for Excellent Scientific and Technological Innovation Team of Jiangsu Higher Education; and National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 30900293). We are also pleased to thank Waters China Ltd. for technical support.