Ten Years of Research into Phytomedicines Analysis - An Era in New Technologies and Methods

During the 10-year period from 1999 to 2009, a rapid evolution was witnessed in the research of phytomedicines analysis. Radical developments in various chromatography methods have also taken place. Especially Ultra Performance LC spurred a revolution in liquid chromatography and brought regular analysis of new levels of efficiency. Another important addition has been the development of hyphenated techniques involving LC/MSn, LC/NMR, CE/MS, HSCCC/MS and TLC/MS, etc, which provide a more efficient analysis approach for complex systems in herbs, functional foods, and their related products. These achievements significantly enhance the possibility to find new lead compounds or traces of in vivo and in vitro metabolites of meaningful constituents, and provide both higher sample analysis throughput and better assay sensitivity for researchers.