Pre-Column Derivatization in HPLC of Amino Acids and Peptides

The development of high preformance liquid chromatography with permanently bonded non-polar, so called reversed phase packings has been useful in the separation of a variety of peptides and amino acid derivatives. Limits to the detectability of underivatized substances are on the order of several nanomolar. Sensitivity enhancement became very important for the analysis and determination of peptide hormones, their metabolites and fragments, trace constituents and amino acids existing in very little quantity in biological and clinical samples. Therefore chemical derivatization techniques have been introduced into HPLC, too. By derivatization not only sensitivity enhancement, but selectivity can be achieved.