Study on the Bioassay of Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Fuke Qianjin Capsule Based on COX-2 Inhibiting Activity

Run-Ran Ma; Xiao-Juan Yang; Ying Huang; Shuai-Shuai Chen; Xiao-He Xiao; Jia-Bo Wang; Ming Niu

doi:10.1155/2021/6620124

Study on the Bioassay of Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Fuke Qianjin Capsule Based on COX-2 Inhibiting Activity

Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2021 Apr 8:2021:6620124. doi: 10.1155/2021/6620124. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Run-Ran Ma^{1

2}, Xiao-Juan Yang³, Ying Huang², Shuai-Shuai Chen², Xiao-He Xiao², Jia-Bo Wang^{2

4}, Ming Niu⁵

Affiliations

¹ College of Pharmacy, Henan University of Chinese Medicine, Zhengzhou, Henan 450000, China.
² China Military Institute of Chinese Medicine, Fifth Medical Center of Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing 100039, China.
³ Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital, School of Clinical Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing 102218, China.
⁴ School of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Capital Medical University, Beijing 100069, China.
⁵ Department of Poisoning Treatment, Fifth Medical Center of Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing 100071, China.

Abstract

Fuke Qianjin Capsule (FKQJ) is a common TCM compound formula in the treatment of gynecological inflammation-related diseases. This study intends to explore and establish a bioassay method to further improve its quality control. The bioassay method for the determination of anti-inflammatory biopotency was established based on its inhibitory activity on recombinant human cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), an active target of FKQJ in the treatment of female pelvic inflammatory disease. We firstly established chemical fingerprint of 20 batches of FKQJ by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography to identify the components and analyze the chemical similarities. The similarity within different batches of FKQJ was relatively high. The values of similarity of the 19 batches were between 0.973 and 0.995, while one batch's similarity value was 0.813. Celecoxib, a selective inhibitor of COX-2, was chosen as the positive control drug in COX-2 activity assay to establish an anti-inflammatory biopotency detection method based on parallel line test of qualitative response. The methodological investigation showed that the method possessed good repeatability and precision. Secondly, the anti-inflammatory biopotency of 20 batches of FKQJ for inhibiting COX-2 was determined. The results showed that the biopotency of different batches of FKQJ ranged from 676 U/μg to 1310 U/μg, with average value of 918 U/μg and RSD of 16.7%. Based on multiple linear regression analysis, we found that three contents were highly correlated with the anti-inflammatory biopotency, while chlorogenic acid was validated of the strongest anti-inflammatory activity in vitro. Compared with chemical detection, bioassay can better reflect the quality fluctuation of different batches of products and correlate the known pharmacodynamic targets. The supplement of the bioassay method based on chemical evaluation is helpful to improve the quality control ability of Chinese patent medicine and ensure its clinical efficacy is stable and controllable.