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Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) uses naturally occurring resources such as plants and animals to treat diseases. Most TCM-derived plants must be processed prior to their medicinal usage; hence the effective ingredients may differ from those in the freshly harvested plant extracts. In this work, we present a fast and generic approach using sub-2-pm liquid chromatography-time-of-flight-mass spectrometry (sub-2-pm-LC-TOF-MS) coupled with multivariate statistical data analysis to systematically profile the ingredient changes between the fresh and processed samples. We believe this approach will ultimately facilitate the progress of migrating from a TCM system to a modern Chinese medicine (MCM) system. The application example described here studies different extracts from Polygonatum kingianum, a plant otherwise known in China as huang jing. For this study, we exam- ined the differences in ingredient composition of huang jing before and after processing so that the leading chemical markers could be profiled and identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the use of sub-2-um liquid chromatography-time-of-flight-mass spectrometry coupled with multivariate statistical data analysis in profiling ingredient changes between fresh and processed samples of huang jing for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The approach is believed to be effective in facilitating the progress of migrating from a TCM system to modern Chinese medicine (MCM). Moreover, it will help understand the mechanisms of action.