In this work, a modified pretreatment method using magnetic molecularly imprinted polymers (MMIPs) was successfully applied to study the metabolites of an important botanical with ultraperformance liquid chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q-TOF-MS). The MMIPs for glucoside-specific adsorption was used to identify metabolites of Pulsatilla chinensis in rat feces. Polymers were prepared by using Fe3O4 nanoparticles as the supporting matrix, d-glucose as fragment template, and dopamine as the functional monomer and cross-linker. Results showed that MMIPs exhibited excellent extraction performance, large adsorption capacity (5.65 mg/g), fast kinetics (60 min), and magnetic separation. Furthermore, the MMIPs coupled with UPLC-Q-TOF-MS were successfully utilized for the identification of 17 compounds including 15 metabolites from the Pulsatilla saponin metabolic pool. This study provides a reliable protocol for the separation and identification of saponin metabolites in a complex biological sample, including those from herbal medicines.
Keywords: P. chinensis; fragment template; magnetic molecularly imprinted polymers; metabolites study.