Biol. Pharm. Bull. 30(5) 847—851 (2007)

F. H. CHEN is a kind of herb belongs to Acanthopanax Gracilistylus with synonym of stephania sinica and pseudoginsen radix. It has been considered to be one of the famous traditional Chinese medicinal herbs in China or other oriental countries for thousands of years. San-Chi contains many of chemical constituents. Total panax notoginsenoside (TPNS), isolated from San-Chi is a mixture of more than 20 Dammarane type saponins, including ginsenoside Rg1, Rg2, Rb1, Rb2, Rb3, Rc, Rd, Re, Rh, F2 and notoginsenoside R1, R2, R3, R4, R6, Fa, Fc, Fe, etc. Among these constituents, panax notoginsenoside R1, ginsenoside Rg1, Rd, Re and Rb1 (Fig. 1) was considered to be the principal active constituents. They are all derivatives from 20 (S)-protopanaxadiol, 20 (S)-protopanax-panaxatriol or Dammarane type triterpene. TPNS displays important role on the treatment of hematinic, anti-inflammatory, coronary heart disease, the sequelae of cerebrovascular accident, anti-fatigue, hepatoprotection, anticancer and immunological disease as well as ginsenoside. Many preparations of TPNS were used in clinic including tablet, drop pill and injection. Xuesaitong injection was one of these preparations which only consisted of TPNS. As a kind of typical multiple constituent and multiple actions traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), it was very difficult to evaluate the pharmacokinetic profiles of TPNS in rats or human. Only several literatures reported recent years for the pharmacokinetic study of TPNS (powder or liposomes) according to the evaluation of ginsenoside Rg1 and Rb1 after oral, intravenous and pulmonary instillation administration TPNS in rats. It was not perfect for the pharmacokinetic evaluation of TPNS when panax notoginsenoside R1, a kind of typical constituent in San-Chi was missed. The development of analytical technique gives us a possibility for the trace determination of constitutent of TCM in bio-sample. In this contribution, a developed and validated LC-ESI-MS method was employed for the simultaneous determination of panax notoginsenoside R1, ginsenoside Rg1, Rd, Re and Rb1 in rat plasma. A reasonable and general pharmacokinetic profile of TPNS in rats was obtained according to the evaluation of absolute bioavailability and pharmacokinetic profiles of the consitutents mentioned above.