Screening and identification of lipase inhibitors extracted from Dioscorea nipponica Makino by UV–vis and HPLC coupled to UPLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS

Dioscoreae nipponica Makino (D. nipponica) as the rhizome of dioscoreaceae rich in steroidal saponins, has been reported to have the hypolipidemic effects etc. However, it is still unclear which exact active components are primary responsible for the beneficial effects. This study was conducted to fish out the lipase inhibitors from D. nipponica, and evaluate the inhibitory activity on porcine pancreatic lipase (PPL) through in vitro kinetic assay using p-nitrophenyl palmitate as substrate. Accordingly, the ethanolic extract was subjected to D101 macroporous resin purification for spectrophotometric screening, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) separation and structural characterization by ultra-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Through orlistat validation, the PPL inhibitory activity and IC₅₀ value of the extract were respectively 68.34 ± 1.47 % and 107.05 μg/mL under the optimized inhibition conditions. From 6 steroidal saponins identified, the inhibitory components named the protodioscin, protogracillin, dioscin and gracillin were fished out by grouping separation and HPLC analysis. Furthermore, dioscin and gracillin with the parent structure of diogenin were confirmed as the major inhibitors by virtue of stability tests based on transformation of protodioscin and protogracillin. Finally, the inhibitory mechanism of the major inhibitors toward PPL was further clarified by kinetic analysis and molecular docking analysis. The proposed method not only revealed the PPL inhibitory components in D. nipponica, but also provided an effective approach to hierarchical screening of PPL inhibitors from natural plants.