Methodology and guidelines for the quality control of fingerprint chromatograms of herbal medicines

Herbal medicines have a long history of therapeutic use. Recently, an increased interest is observed to characterise these natural substances to better control their action. Due to the complexity of their composition, it is difficult to identify all active substances. Hence, only a reduced number of components is determined, which does not always allow to evaluate the product quality. This lack of characterisation is a limiting factor towards more general application. Since some years, fingerprint chromatography is used as identification and quality evaluation tool. In 2000, the Chinese State Drug Administration decided to develop fingerprints of Traditional Chinese Medicines as quality control standard. However, the fingerprint is usually represented by complex chromatograms containing several overlapping peaks. Hence, it is not trivial to resolve as many components as possible even using the current chromatographic techniques. Moreover, the current guidelines for the quality control of these products are unsuitable. The aim of the project is to study the methodology to develop fingerprint chromatograms and to define guidelines for the quality control of herbal medicines based on these chromatograms.