Screening of trypsin inhibitors in Cotinus coggygria Scop. extract using at-line nanofractionation coupled with semi-preparative reverse-phase liquid chromatography

In this study, an at-line nanofractionation (ANF) platform was successfully fabricated in parallel with mass spectrometry and trypsin inhibitory bioactivity assessment for rapid screening of trypsin inhibitors (TIs) from natural products for the first time. After systematic optimization, the ANF platform was applied to screen and identify TIs in the extract of a traditional Chinese herb, i.e., Cotinus coggygria Scop. The semi-preparative reverse-phase liquid chromatography was used subsequently to further simplify and enrich the insufficiently separated components. After comprehensive evaluation and validation, the ANF platform successfully identified 12 compounds as potential TIs, including 8 flavonoids and 2 organic acids. Additionally, a comparison study was conducted using two other ligand fishing approaches, i.e., capillary monolithic and magnetic beads-based trypsin-immobilized enzyme microreactors, which successfully identified 8 identical flavonoids as TIs. Importantly, the molecular docking study showed the molecular interactions between enzymes and inhibitors, thus strongly supporting the experimental results. Overall, this work has fully demonstrated the feasibility of the established ANF platform for screening TIs from Cotinus coggygria Scop., and proved its great prospects for screening bioactive components from natural products.