Quality evaluation of Sinopodophyllum hexandrum (Royle) Ying based on active compounds, bioactivities and RP-HPLC fingerprint

Sinopodophyllum hexandrum (Royle) Ying is a perennial medicinal plant that produces the anti-cancer lignan compositions especially podophyllotoxin. Since podophyllotoxin commercial production via chemical synthesis, biotechnological intervention or cultivation has yet to meet the increasing demand, mining the potentially available plant organs to discover more natural podophyllotoxin sources is essential. This study investigated the reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) fingerprint, active chemicals (lignans, flavonoids, and phenolic profiles), and bioactivities (antimicrobial and cytotoxic activities) of distinct S. hexandrum plant organs. Among different plant organs, the rhizome is a preponderant organ due to high active compounds especially podophyllotoxin at 71.615☓103 μg/mL, high bioactivity with low minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC)/minimal bactericidal concentration (MBC)/minimal fungicidal concentration (MFC) value of 5/5/5 mg/mL, and low CIR50 value of 0.0718 μg/mL, followed by root. Chemometrics analysis techniques, including correlation analysis (CA), similarity analysis (SA), hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), principal component analysis (PCA), and discriminant analysis (DA), were further employed to facilitate accurate quality assessment of different plant organs from S. hexandrum. The findings unambiguously validated the clustering of seven samples into four major groups (G1–G4), with G1 (rhizome)>G2 (root)>G4 (fruit, blossom, and leaf)>G3 (stem and petiole) as the consistent quality ordering, despite significant differences in chemical compositions and bioactivities. Considered the practical application, the rhizome is, therefore, a preferred medicinal organ, and root could be considered as a substitute resource. The rhizome or root extraction could be used as a potential raw material source for natural antimicrobial agents and cancer cell inhibitors in the food, medicine, and healthcare industries. This research added to our understanding of the integrated exploitation and utilization extension of S. hexandrum resources. RP-HPLC fingerprinting in combination with chemometrics approaches was also confirmed as a highly reliable method for assessing the quality of S. hexandrum and other industrial crops.