A Novel QPAR Technique for Extracting Valuable Information from Herbal Medicines

A novel QPAR technique provides effective and accurate bioactivity indicators of herbal products by merely inputting chemical fingerprints and related bioactivity data

This novel quantitative-pattern-activity-relationship (QPAR) technique brings the breakthrough to answer two significant existing problems in the studying of complex active mixtures: (1) Can we predict accurately the total functional activities of unknown sample based on only the chromatographic profile? and (2) Can we identify those features in the chromatographic fingerprint responsible for such activities? In studying two herbal medicines, the results obtained clearly demonstrated the ability of the technique in solving these two problems. Its prediction capability is better than 92% in the total immunological enhancement bioactivity of one of them. Another breakthrough is successful prediction of the antioxidant active fractions of the other one without the need of separating individual fractions through experimentation.

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System Diagram

Herbal Medicines

Special Features and Advantages

The novel QPAR technique greatly reduces the time, cost and labor to data-mine the two pieces of important information about complex active mixtures like herbal medicines. It provides a model for predicting total functional activity from the chromatographic profile, and the features in the chromatographic fingerprint responsible for the activity.

Applications

QPAR can be applied to study samples in herbal medicines, foods, agricultural plants, environmental protection, etc. Through these investigations, the bioactive, functional and toxic ingredients can be obtained much easier. Also the quality of related products can be evaluated quantitatively based on their functional activities, like that of western medicines.

Awards

Gold Medal - 40th International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva, Switzerland (April 2012)
Award in recognition of the Best Submitted Scientific Presentation (Poster Session). The 5th International Functional Food Symposium, Promoting Good health & developing a sustainable environment (March 2011)

Principal Investigator

Prof. Foo-tim CHAU

Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology

Dr Daniel Man-yuen SZE

Department of Health Technology and Informatics

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