Synergy of metabolic profiling, pharmacological testing and process engineering enables inauguration of a bamboo pilot plant extraction unit in Fuijan, China
The application of high-end analytical technologies for exact characterization of the plant material achieves great synergy in combination with pharmacology and process technology.
On basis of the combination of the three disciplines analytical chemistry, process technology and pharmacology, not only criteria for an appropriate selection of bamboo species with beneficial health properties could be determined. In fact differences in pharmacological properties of bamboo extracts could be directly linked on a molecular level with results of LC-MS/MS metabolic profiling.
Bamboo is a rich source of flavonoids. These secondary plant metabolites exhibit many beneficial physiological effects such as anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, anti-viral, anti-aging properties or prevention against cardio vascular diseases, which were exploited in traditional Chinese medicine TCM also [1]. Today bamboo is widespread used in cosmetics and in the textile and food industry. One desired criterion for utilization of bamboo as a therapeutic crop is a naturally high content of total flavonoids. This property might be influenced by genus, species, age or geographic origin of the plant. However, it is not only the total flavonoid content and the individual flavonoid composition that determines the assets of a bamboo species but also complete metabolic profile of the individual plant type at a given growth stage. Robust analytical LC-MS/MS methods for targeted flavonoid analysis allows for direct feed-back loops with process engineering to optimize natural product extraction procedures. On the other hand non-targeted profiling of bamboo extracts and application of statistical data mining tools allows to link pharmacological properties with identified plant metabolites.
Different bamboo species can be partially differentiated by the flavonoid profile assessed by MS/MS (MRM) experiments. However, e.g. anti-oxidative and anti-inflammation capacity were not well correlated neither with total flavonoid content nor with pattern of targeted flavonoid analysis by LC-MS/MS. In contrast non-targeted metabolic profiling by UHPLC high resolution Q-TOF MS/MS and statistical data analysis reveal differences in the observed metabolite pattern of Chinese bamboo Phyllostachys edulis according to age of leaves.
PCA score plot of young vs. old Phyllostachys edulis leaves(left), TNFα-induced release of VEGF and IL-8 in immortalized human keratinocytes (HaCaT) cells of young leaves (middle), LC-MS/MS chromatogram of up (green) and down (red) regulated features in young Phyllostachys edulis leaves (right).
Identification of 2’-Deoxyadenosine as a significant metabolite differentiating young and old Phyllostachys edulis leaves.
As the trend of “going natural” is increasingly adopted by mainstream consumers, cosmetic companies continue to search for innovative new botanicals and natural products which can be medicinally used. Thus, this project is of high interest since herbal extracts such as bamboo are promising candidates in the development of a novel cosmeceutical. Our results justify further investigations of bamboo extracts – the pharmacological results on the anti-inflammatory and wound-healing activities are very promising. We demonstrated that UHPLC-MS/MS metabolic profiling results allow for explanation of pharmacological results directly on a molecular (metabolite) level.
[1] Lu B., Wu, X., Tie X., Zhang Y. ; Food and Chemical Toxicology, 2005, 43, 783. [2] Schlotterbeck, G., Hettich, T., Butterweck, V., Riedl, W.; Chimia 2013, 67, 7.