Analysis of Herbal Medicines Q-Markers

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The complex situation of multiple sources and origins of herbal materials makes the quality of herbal products vary widely, especially since the amount of active ingredients varies significantly. This poses many challenges for quality evaluation and standard setting. Especially when compounded preparations are made from such herbs, it is often difficult to truly reflect the quality of the herb about its efficacy if the quality evaluation is based on the determination of the amount of one or several active ingredients. The new concept of quality control, Q-marker, refers to chemical substances inherent in herbal materials and herbal products or formed during processing and preparation and are closely related to the functional properties of herbal medicines. Lifeasible introduces Q-markers as marker chemicals that reflect the safety and efficacy of herbal medicines for quality control.

Analysis of herbal medicines Q-markers

Q-Marker research model based on five principles

This is a quality control and quality evaluation system for compound herbal medicines based on effectiveness, specificity, measurability, transferability and traceability, and compatibility relationships. It better reflects the correlation between the quality evaluation system and effectiveness and safety and reflects the specificity and different characteristics of quality control indicators.

Q-Marker research model based on the performance-effect-object triad

The Q-Marker research model is based on the triadic theory of performance-effects-objects, which better reflects the idea and characteristics of herbal medicine, and also explains the characteristics of herbal medicine quality control, better reflecting the medicinal properties as the initiation and the multiplication of efficacy. We can screen the substance bases of medicinal taste (medicinal properties) from the perspectives of taste, smell, and functional expression of several properties, respectively. Based on the elucidation of their potent substances, Q-markers of the target herbal materials are identified from different levels, such as animal models, isolated organs, and multiple methods and perspectives, such as network pharmacology and metabolomics.

Q-Marker research model based on metabolic formulae-omics

Metabolic formulae-omics is a research strategy that integrates herbal serum medicinal chemistry and metabolomics techniques to discover the substance basis of the potency of constituent drugs that are relevant to clinical efficacy, reflective of the formulae mix, on the premise of formula-evidence correspondence and efficacy. We can combine this strategy with the Q-marker for herbal medicines, an important tool for addressing effectiveness, traceability, and reflecting the compounding properties. It can facilitate the development of herbal medicines towards the clarification of chemical composition and mechanism of action and help to unravel the complex black box system of the material basis and mechanism of action of herbal medicines.

Q-Marker research model based on analytic hierarchy process-entropy weight method (AHP-EWM)

We have constructed a quantitative evaluation system for herbal Q-marker, AHP-EWM, which can analyze the primary indicators, including validity, measurability, and specificity, using hierarchical analysis for weighting, and subsequently apply the entropy weighting method to analyze the secondary indicators supported by literature and experimental data under the primary indicators, calculate the weights of the factors in the indicator layer and then weight them to calculate the comprehensive score of each component.

This provides a new idea and method for the quantitative evaluation and hierarchical identification of herbal Q-markers and provides a unified planning for selecting influencing factors and setting weights, thus ranking the importance of candidate Q-markers, which can have a comprehensive evaluation effect. It embodies both subjective logical judgment and analysis, as well as objective calculation and deduction, and has greater flexibility, increasing the quantitative identification design of Q-markers.

The Q-Marker provides an objective understanding of the complex system and multiple medicinal effects of herbal medicines, and Lifeasible has established a point-line surface-body multi-dimensional quality control system to comprehensively evaluate and control the overall quality of herbal medicines. We have established a quality control system with herbal characteristics regarding specificity, transmission, and traceability. Please feel free to contact us to start your research on Q-marker for herbal medicines.

For Research Use Only. Not For Clinical Use.