Authentication of Tinospora cordifolia derived herbal supplements using high resolution mass spectrometry-based metabolomics approach – A pilot study

Tinospora cordifolia herbal supplements have recently gained prominence due to their promising immunomodulatory and anti-viral effects against SARS-CoV-2. Mislabelling or diluting Tinospora supplements for profit may harm public health. Thus, validating the label claim of these supplements in markets is critical. This study investigated how high resolution mass spectrometry-based metabolomics and chemometrics can be used to distinguish Tinospora cordifolia from two other closely related species (T. crispa and T. sinensis). The Orthogonal Partial Least Square Discriminant Analysis (OPLS-DA) and PLS-DA based chemometric models predicted the species identity of Tinospora with 94.44% accuracy. These classification models were trained using 54 T. cordifolia, 21 T. crispa, and 21 T. sinensis samples. We identified 7 biomarkers, including corydine, malabarolide, ecdysterone, and reticuline, which discriminated Tinospora cordifolia from the two other species. The label claim of 25 commercial Tinospora samples collected from different parts of India was verified based on the relative abundance of the biomarker compounds, of which 20 were found authentic. The relative abundance of biomarkers significantly varied in the 5 suspicious market samples. This pilot study demonstrates a robust metabolomic approach for authenticating Tinospora species, which can further be used in other herbal matrices for product authentication and securing quality.