Enantiospecific high-performance liquid chromatographic analysis of 2-phenylpropionic acid, ketoprofen and fenoprofen

A high-performance liquid chromatographic method has been developed for the quantitation of the R- and S-enantiomers of 2-phenylpropionic acid, ketoprofen and fenoprofen. The assay consists of extracting the arylpropionic acid with an internal standard and measuring the total (R + S) concentration of enantiomers by reversed-phase chromatography, derivatising the chromatographic fraction corresponding to the enantiomers to form R- and S, R-2-phenylethylamide distereoisomers which are resolved by normal-phase chromatography in order to calculate the fraction of each enantiomer. The limits of sensitivity of the assay for 2-phenylpropionic acid, ketoprofen and fenoprofen are 6, 0.2 and 2.5 mg/l, respectively.