Abstract

Sesamin, one of the lignans in sesame seed, was a labile compound in MS and it was reported that the protonated moleculeof sesamin decomposed easily in ES ionization process and it cannot be detected (G. Yan, et al., Rapid Commun MassSpectrom. 2007, 21, 3613-3620). To protect labile compounds, an amino-cyclodextrin (NCyD) was added to the sample to promotethe host-guest interaction complex in ESI-MS. As a result, sesamin was ionized as the NCyD-sesamin-NCyD (1:2) complexwithout undesired decomposition, suggesting that the amino-CyDs assist the ionization of the labile molecules capped withCyDs by host-guest interaction and these compounds were ionized without their decomposition, those are like amino-CyD complex-assisted ionization. The amino-CyD complexes of sesamin and sesamolin were also analyzed by their ion-mobility MS.