2,6-Dimethyl-4-quinolinecarboxylic acid N-hydroxysuccinimide ester: a fluorogenic hydrophilic derivatizing reagent for liquid chromatographic analysis of aliphatic amines

The use of a fluorogenic, hydrophilic, and amine-reactive reagent, 2,6-dimethyl-4-quinolinecarboxylic acid N-hydroxysuccinimide ester (DMQC-OSu) has been investigated in the procolumn derivatization for the LC separation of aliphatic amines. In pH 8.0 aqueous medium, DMQC-OSu reacted with amines at 50 degrees C within 20 min to form highly fluorescent carboxamides and the excess reagent hydrolyzed to the corresponding carboxylic acid. The separation of representative amine derivatives with DMQC-OSu has been performed using a C18 column with the fluorescence detection at 326/409 nm. The detection limits reached nanomolar level. The proposed method has been applied to the analysis of real samples with recoveries of 94-108%. Compared with other succinimidyl esters used in the derivatization of amino compounds, DMQC-OSu and its hydrolysate had negligible fluorescence (phi(fl) = 0.09 and 0.02, respectively), which implied that small peaks appeared in chromatograms and slight interference was introduced to the determination.