Comprehensive Quality Evaluation of Traditional Chinese Medicine Guanxinjing Capsule Based on Fingerprint and Multicomponent Simultaneous Quantitative Method

ABSTRACT A novel dual‐wavelength ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) fingerprint was established, 56 common peaks were confirmed and attributed to the source of the medicinal materials, and 13 chromatographic peaks of them were identified by UHPLC quadrupole time‐of‐flight (Q‐TOF)‐MS/MS and UHPLC‐UV method. Furthermore, a simple and sensitive HPLC‐quadrupole trap (Q‐TRAP)‐MS/MS was developed for the simultaneous determination of 16 active components with electrospray ionization (ESI) source switching between positive and negative modes in a single run. The above two methods were successfully applied for the quality evaluation of Guanxinjing capsule (GXJC). Finally, statistical analysis including principal component analysis (PCA), hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), and orthogonal partial least squares discriminate analysis (OPLS‐DA) were applied, and 13 variables with great contribution to different groups of samples were screened. This study not only provides a rapid, accurate, and comprehensive qualitative and quantitative method for quality evaluation of GXJC but it also provides a reference workflow for the other traditional Chinese medicines.