Chem. Pharm. Bull. 53(6) 677—683 (2005)

BGE., commonly known as “Danshen” 丹参), is an important Chinese medicinal herb used to promote blood flow to overcome blood stasis and to cool the blood to resolve abscesses in traditional Chinese medicine. Because of the increase of cardiovascular diseases in modern society, it is now experiencing a particularly strong and rapid upsurge in usage. In chemical studies over several decades, it has been found that there are a variety of diterpenoids, phenolics, flavonoids, triterpenoids and sterols in Radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae. In the early stages of bioactivity research on this herb, the diterpenoids attracted a great deal of attention from pharmacologists, since diterpenoid tanshinones are the major constituents of the nonpolar fraction of Radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae. Up to now, more than 30 diterpenoidal compounds have been chemically identified from this herb. They have been shown to possess a variety of biological activities including anti-ischemia, antioxidant and anti-tumor properties. Among them, tanshinone IIA was approved to be a drug which has been clinically used in China. However, water-soluble phenolics are attracting more attention recently since water decoctions of Radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae are commonly used in clinics in China. In the water extract, the main chemicals are caffeic acid metabolites, such as caffeic acid monomer (e.g., caffeic acid itself, danshensu and isoferulic acid), caffeic acid dimers (rosmarinic acid, salvianolic acids D and F), caffeic acid trimers [lithospermic acid (lithospermic acid A), salvianolic acids A, C, H, I, J and K] and caffeic acid tetramers [salvianolic acid B (lithospermic acid B) and salvianolic acid E] (Fig. 1). Pharmacological studies showed that the phenolics can protect the myocardium from ischemia-induced derangement, protect neural cells from injuries caused by anoxia, inhibit platelet aggregation, reduce hepatic fibrosis and depress the activities of HIV-1. Total salvianolic acids purified from Radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae have been clinically used for cardiovascular diseases in China. Although Radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae itself and the preparations containing its whole extracts were proved to be highly effective for the treatment of some diseases by pharmacological studies and clinical studies in China, they have not been officially recognized internationally. One important reason for this is the lack of an effective method to evaluate the quality of the raw medicinal materials. Usually, the methods of chemical testing and TLC identification are adopted for the authentication of traditional Chinese medicine in the Pharmacopoeia of the People’s Republic of China. However, chemical testing based on the chemical group reaction is not a specific method for authenticating this herbal medicine. TLC identification is not powerful due to its relative weak ability of separation and reproducibility. In recent years, chromatographic fingerprinting has been shown to be an efficient method for evaluating herbal medicines since the chromatography has very powerful separation ability. Multiple components in traditional Chinese medicines can be simultaneously separated by using HPLC, gas chromatography (GC), high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC) and capillary electrophoresis (CE). Indeed, the use of HPLC coupled with a diode array detector (DAD) for the fingerprinting of Radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae and its preparations has been reported. However, these fingerprints only dealt with either the diterpenoidal compounds or the phenolic compounds in the crude drug. It is obvious that they are not sufficient for authenticating this herb since both the nonpolar and water-soluble compounds are pharmacologically-active components in Radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae. Therefore, a multi-component HPLC fingerprint method that can simultaneously analyze both water-soluble and nonpolar compounds including most of the pharmacologically-active components should be developed. June 2005 Notes Chem. Pharm. Bull. 53(6) 677—683 (2005) 677