Metabolic fingerprinting of dioecious Tinospora cordifolia (Thunb) Miers stem using DART TOF MS and differential pharmacological efficacy of its male and female plants

Variations due to geographical location and dioecious nature have shown implications in the chemical and pharmacological properties of medicinal plants and their herbal products. Tinospora cordifolia is one of the most important dioecious plant distributed throughout India and very widely used in many herbal products and formulations. In this study a method combining direct analysis in real time (DART) ion source coupled to high-resolution time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometer (MS) along with multivariate analysis was developed and applied for metabolic fingerprinting and screening of the major phytochemicals in this plant. Using this approach phytodiversity in plants due to gender and geographical distribution were studied in T. cordifolia stem cuttings without any processing. An aqueous/ethanolic stem extracts of male and female T. cordifolia were also evaluated for immunomodulatory activity in inbred strain of age and sex matched BALB/c mice. A characteristic nine and sixteen marker peaks were respectively, identified as gender and geographical markers for T. cordifolia stem. It also discriminates the herbal and polyherbal formulations of T. cordifolia stem using principal component analysis. Female plant stem extract caused a significant up regulation in the pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines and activated the peritoneal exudate cells leading to significant release in reactive oxygen species and enhanced the in vitro lymphocyte proliferation than male stem extract. This finding underscore the importance of gender in all dioecious medicinal plants where only vegetative parts are used as a source of drugas the pharmacological activity may vary depending on the sex of the plant used. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.