Cell membrane chromatography (CMC) is a bioaffinity chromatography technique for characterizing interactions between drugs and membrane receptors and has been widely used to screen active components from complex samples such as herbal medicines (HMs). However, it has never been applied in vivo due to its relatively high limit of detection (LOD) and the matrix interferences. In this study, a novel on-line comprehensive two-dimensional HepG2/CMC/enrich columns/high performance liquid chromatography/time-of-flight mass spectrometry system was developed to rapidly screen potential anti-hepatoma components from drug-containing serum of rats after oral administration of Radix scutellariae. A matrix interference deduction method with a home-written program in MATLAB was developed, which could successfully eliminate the interference of endogenous substances in serum. Baicalein, wogonin, chrysin, oroxylin A, neobaicalein and rivularin from Radix scutellariae extraction were significantly retained in the HepG2/CMC column. Three potential active components, wogonin, oroxylin A and neobaicalein were firstly screened from the drug-containing serum as well. The cell counting kit-8 assay demonstrated that wogonin, oroxylin A and chrysin showed high inhibitory activities in a dose-dependent manner on HepG2 cells at the concentration of 12.5-200 μM (p<0.05) and the IC50 values were 69.83, 16.66 and 51.6 μM, respectively. Wogonin and oroxylin A, which were screened both from Radix scutellariae extraction and the drug-containing serum, could be selected as lead compounds to obtain good anti-hepatoma effects. The proposed comprehensive 2D CMC system and matrix interference elimination strategy have significant advantages for in vivo screening of active components from complex biological samples and could be applied to other biochromatography models.
Keywords: Anti-hepatoma components; Comprehensive two-dimensional HepG2/cell membrane chromatography system; Drug-containing serum; Herbal medicine; Matrix interference elimination strategy.
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