Simultaneous determination of cytosine arabinoside, its nucleotides and metabolites by ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatography

Currently available high-performance liquid chromatographic assays for cytosine arabinoside (ara-C) and its metabolites suffer from two major shortcomings: inability to resolve both ara-C and its nucleotides in a single chromatographic step and/or inadequate sensitivity to allow quantitation of intracellular cytosine arabinofuranoside-5'-triphosphate (ara-CTP) without the use of radiolabelled drug. In this paper, we describe a new ion-pairing high-performance liquid chromatographic assay for ara-C in biological samples that can separate ara-C from its nucleotides, metabolites, and naturally occurring ribonucleotides in a single chromatographic step with a lower limit of quantitation of 5 pmol for ara-C and 10 pmol for ara-CTP. Examples of the utility of this assay are shown in studies of intracellular pharmacokinetics of ara-C in cultured human breast cancer cells and in analysis of plasma nucleoside levels in patients receiving high-dose thymidine chemotherapy. We conclude that this assay provides a rapid and versatile system that can be applied to the study of both cellular and plasma nucleoside pharmacokinetics.     

Simultaneous determination of myocardial nucleotides, nucleosides, purine bases and creatine phosphate by ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatography.

An ion-pair reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method is described for the separation and quantification of myocardial nucleotides, nucleosides, their metabolites and creatine phosphate-related compounds in a single run. Separation of a standard mixture containing 21 compounds was achieved on a 5-microns Hypersil ODS column with a 5-min isocratic elution (buffer: 0.1 M NaH2PO4, pH 5.5, containing 5.9 mM tetrabutylammonium hydrogen-sulphate) followed by a slow linear gradient to 17% acetonitrile. The method was applied to extracts of freeze-clamped rat heart tissue samples as well as to extracts of neonatal rat heart cardiomyocytes, and it provided good resolution of high-energy phosphates, including creatine phosphate, as well as of their degradation products.     

Determination of nucleotides, nucleosides and nucleobases in cells of different complexity by reversed-phase and ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatography

Procedures are presented for the analysis of profiles of purine and pyridine compounds in human and rabbit red blood cells by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography and in Ehrlich ascites tumour cells of mouse by ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatography. These compounds are present in rabbit erythrocytes in higher concentrations than in human blood cells, and in rabbit reticulocytes the concentration of purine compounds is still higher. During glucose-free incubation, human red cells accumulate adenosine and adenine in the presence of coformycin owing to the inhibition of adenosine and AMP deamination. Ehrlich ascites tumour cells lose major portions of purine mono-, di- and triphosphates between the seventh and eleventh day after inoculation into mouse peritoneal cavities.     

Assay of sialyltransferase activity by reversed-phase ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatography.

Sialyltransferases (CMP-N-acetylneuraminic acid:glycoprotein sialyltransferases, EC 2.4.99.1) are involved in the transfer of a sialic acid moiety from CMP-N-acetylneuraminic acid (CMP-NeuAc) to an oligosaccharide side-chain of an acceptor, asialoglycoprotein (AGP), according to the following reaction: CMP-NeuAc + AGP----NeuAc-O-AGP + CMP. This enzyme occurs in elevated levels in the sera of patients with a wide variety of neoplastic diseases and its assay might be useful in monitoring treatment. Radioactive CMP-NeuAc has been used in assays and the radioactive sialylated product separated and counted by liquid scintillation spectrometry. This study shows that a simple, rapid, non-radiochemically based high-performance liquid chromatographic method developed for the analysis of CMP-sialic acid synthetase can be used for the quantitation of sialyltransferase activity by monitoring simultaneously the utilization of CMP-NeuAc and the release of CMP. We describe the application of this method to assay of commercially available sialyltransferase activity and to activities from synovial, ascites and gastric fluids.     

Quantitative determination of acivicin in bulk drug and pharmaceutical formulations by ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatography

An ion-pair reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method for the determination of the purity of acivicin and the amount of drug in a sterile powder and two sterile solution formulations is described. The method displays good recoveries (98.4-100.4%) for all formulations and a linear range of 0.002-20 micrograms of drug injected. Estimates of assay precision were 1.3% for the bulk drug, 0.6% for sterile solution formulations and 1.6% for the sterile powder formulations.     

Simultaneous determination of cyromazine,melamine and their biodegradation products by ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatography

An ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection method for the determination of cyromazine, melamine and its biodegradation products (ammeline, ammelide, cyanuric acid and biuret) was developed. C18 column was utilised to separate the six analytes with a mobile phase consisting of perchloric acid-ammonia solution and acetonitrile, under gradient elution and variable flow rate. The detection wavelengths were 205 nm for cyanuric acid and biuret and 222 nm for cyromazine, melamine, ammeline and ammelide. For analysis of sediment samples, the extraction solution containing acetonitrile, ammonia and water (80:10:10 by volume) was used to extract the analytes from sediment matrix. Using the extraction method for the spiked sediment sample, high linearity of matrix-matched standard curve could be obtained for the six analytes. The method detection limit was 0.1 μg g^?1 for melamine and cyromazine, 0.2 μg g^?1 for ammeline and ammelide, 1.2 μg g^?1 for cyanuric acid and 1.0 μg g^?1 for biuret in sediment matrix. The recoveries of these compounds were 70.1–98.3% and the relative standard deviations were 0.5–4.4%. Finally, the proposed method was successfully applied to the analysis of the sediment sample near the wastewater outlet of a melamine-producing factory.     

Identification of cosmetic dyes by ion-pair reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography

A method based on ion-pair reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography with detection at four wavelengths between 400 and 600 nm is reported for the separation and identification of the most common synthetic colour additives in cosmetic products. All the dyes generally employed in the U.S.A. and almost all those in current use in cosmetics in the European Community have been taken into account. The chromatography was performed on a C8 bonded silica packed column, with a 60-min gradient changing from 10 to 95% acetonitrile in water containing 10(-2) M sodium perchlorate (pH 3.0) as mobile phase (flow-rate 2.5 ml/min). Detection limits are in the range 20-100 ng for all dyes investigated. The method has been applied to the analysis of commercial lipsticks.     

Nucleotide pools and energy charges of smooth molluscan muscles analysed by reversed-phase,ion-pair,high-performance liquid chromatography

Summary A method is described for the analysis of the 5 mono-, di- and triphosphates of adenosine, guanosine, uridine and cytidine, as well as uridinediphosphate-glucose and cyclic AMP. Separation is achieved by reversed-phase ion-pair chromatography with linear gradient elution. Application of this method to the analysis of nucleotides in smooth molluscan muscles is described, including the determination of cAMP-levels and the calculation of energy charges for all of the four nucleotide systems.     

Pirmenol determination by high-performance liquid chromatography

A method for the determination of pirmenol in serum is presented in this paper. The method consists of extraction of pirmenol and chlorodisopyramide (internal standard) from serum at an alkaline pH using methylene chloride. The organic extract was analysed using high-performance liquid chromatography. The mobile phase consisted of 0.01 M K2HPO4 (pH 2.4)-acetonitrile (94:6, v/v) delivered at ambient temperature and 2 ml/min through a 25 cm x 0.4 mm C18 reversed-phase column. Detection of the compounds of interest was achieved at 210 nm. The analytical method demonstrated low intra- and inter-assay variation. During the analysis of patient samples and a therapeutic drug mixture test serum, no substances that interfered with pirmenol detection were found. The method is shown to be stable, accurate, selective and sensitive enough to be utilized for the analysis of multiple samples such as may be encountered in clinical or research situations.     

Automated determination of polyamines by high-performance liquid chromatography with simple sample preparation

Recently, a new fully endcapped reversed-phase packing material, Inertsil, was introduced, especially suitable for the determination of basic compounds. We used this packing material to separate o-phthaldialdehyde (OPA) derivatives of amino acid derivatives completely from the OPA derivatives of spermine (SPM), spermidine (SPD), putrescine (PUT) and cadaverine (CAD). The obtained separation made the commonly used off-line extraction procedure redundant and thus an on-line sample clean-up was introduced. This enabled automation of the procedure resulting in a better reproducibility and a more efficient use of equipment. Furthermore, no studies are required to determine the extraction recovery.

The present method has a cycle time of 30 min. A linear response for each polyamine was found up to 250 pmol, with an R² ranging from 0.9981 (SPM) to 0.9998 (CAD). The limit of detection, calculated at a signal-to-noise ratio of 3, was 0.1 pmol, corresponding to a plasma concentration of 0.1 μmol/l. The coefficient of variation (CV) for the peak area was below 3% and for retention times below 0.5% (n=15).

In order to evaluate the applicability of the method, three different types of sample were chromatographed, e.g. urine (obtained from healthy human volunteers), pig plasma and sulfosalicylic acid homogenates of pig intestine biopsies. Tissue homogenates and urine-specimen could easily be quantitated, while plasma concentrations were just above the limit of detection, resulting in a plasma CV ranging from 4.8% (SPM) to 13.6% (SPD) and a tissue CV ranging from 2.1% (SPM) to 8.5% (CAD), The urinary CVs were not determined.

In conclusion, the present method provides an easy way to measure polyamine concentrations for most applications.     

Bioanalysis of suramin in human plasma by ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatography

A liquid chromatographic method is described that can be used for the determination of suramin in plasma samples from cancer patients treated with this drug. The chromatographic system is based on the use of tetrabutylammonium bromide as an ion-pairing agent, while ultraviolet detection is applied. The sample pretreatment is a simple deproteination step by an organic solvent. The same counter-ion as used in the phase system is added in order to increase the recovery of the almost complete protein-bound suramin. The minimum detectable concentration in plasma is ca. 0.1 microgram/ml, thus allowing the monitoring of patients treated with this drug. One example of a plasma concentration-time course after administration of suramin is given.     

Molecular species analysis of phosphatidylcholine by reversed-phase ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatography

The retention behavior of molecular species of phosphatidylcholine (PC) is studied by reversed-phase (RP) ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Mobile phases contain tetraalkyl ammonium phosphates (TAAPs) in methano-acetonitrile-water. The stationary phase is alkyl-bonded silica. Competitive interactions of TAAPs, analyte solutes, and an RP-HPLC column result in reduced retention of PC molecular species. PC molecular species are eluted at longer retention times with a larger size of TAAP in the mobile phase, and an increase in the TAAP concentration invariably causes a decrease in PC molecular species retention times. There is a linear correlation between the logarithmic retention factors (k) of PC molecular species and the total number of carbon atoms of TAAP, and the logarithm of k values of PC molecular species can be approximated as a linear function of the logarithm of the counter-ion concentration. There is found to be no distinct dependence between k values of PC molecular species and the mobile phase pH.     

Direct determination of kallikrein by high-performance liquid chromatography.

A direct and specific identification of porcine pancreatic kallikrein by high-performance hydrophobic chromatography is proposed; the minimum amount which can be injected is 2.5 U. An application to the quantitative determination of the enzyme by high-performance size-exclusion chromatography is reported; the method is precise with a mean coefficient of variation of 2.8% and the minimum amount which can be injected is 0.02 U of kallikrein. The results obtained with determinations in real biological samples (porcine pancreatic powder and human urine) are reported. The method is based on direct and specific chromatographic signals and does not destroy the biological activity of this enzyme.     

Separation of translationally active mRNAs by reversed-phase ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatography

An ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatographic method on C4 columns was developed for the separation of mRNAs. The addition of methylmercuric hydroxide markedly influenced the separation according to length of these molecules. A method is given to recover minute amounts of translatable mRNA from the organic phase. The resolution of mRNAs improved with increasing pore size of the column support.