Rapid Authentication of Chinese Medicines

Due to the high commercial values of popular and expensive Chinese medicines, problems of counterfeiting, adulterating and confusing species are common in the market. Conventional chromatography techniques provide comprehensive chemical composition of a sample for authentication of Chinese medicines. However, it cannot be used to analyze raw samples directly and takes hours to analyze one sample. We have thus developed a direct ionization mass spectrometry (DI-MS) method to detect the major active components of two popular and valuable Chinese medicines, Lingzhi and Tianma. The surface of a small piece of sample was loaded with solvents, and a high voltage was directly applied to the sample, inducing electrospray ionization and generating mass spectra that revealed the major active components. The mass spectra of samples could be generated within minutes. We can then authenticate the samples as well as differentiate their origins and whether they are wild or cultivated based on their major active components revealed.