A dereplication strategy for identifying triterpene acid analogues in Poria cocos by comparing predicted and acquired UPLC-ESI-QTOF-MS/MS data.

This study provided more structure information of triterpene acids in poria for future high throughput screening of anti-cancer candidates. It is suggested that this semi-automated approach in which MS data are automatically compared to a predictive database may also be applicable for efficient screening of other herbal medicines for structural analogues of proven bioactives.