Rapid Characterization of Chlorogenic Acids Analogues in Artemisia younghusbandii Using HPLC/LTQ-Orbitrap MSⁿ Coupled with MDF Data Mining Technology

The method of HPLC/LTQ-Orbitrap MSⁿ was established to achieve the full-scan spectrum of Artemisia younghusbandii extract. Coupling with mass defect filtering (MDF) data mining technique, the template molecules and the filtering windows of chlorogenic acids analogues (CGAs) were determined, which contained rapidly mine the information. The result shows that twenty kinds of CGAs are identified from Artemisia younghusbandii by analyzing the fragmentation pathways and diagnostic product ions of CGAs. Among them, nine kinds of components are monoester CGAs, such as 3-CQA, 5-CQA, 1-CQA, 4-CQA, 1-pCoQA, 5-pCoQA, 1-FQA, 5-FQA and 4-FQA; eleven kinds of components are diester CGAs, such as 1-CQA glycoside, 5-CQA glycoside, 3,4-DiCQA, 4,5-DiCQA, 3,5-DiCQA, CFQA-1, CFQA-2, CFQA-3, CFQA-4, CFQA-5 and CFQA-6. The method can be adopted to identify the CGAs contained in the complex system of traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs). Moreover, it can be further applied to identify the analogues of the chemical constituents from TCMs.