Conjoint liquid chromatography on CIM® monoliths in speciation of Pt-based chemotherapeutics in human serum

As an alternative to conventional particle-packed columns for liquid chromatography, CIM® monolithic supports can be used.1-3 They are extremely permeable and allow very efficient mass transport at low back pressures and good separation efficiency at high flow rates. Consequently, the time of chromatographic separation can be shortened. Such characteristics are very valuable in speciation analysis where preservation of the integrity of individual chemical species of a given element is of crucial importance.4,5 CIM® monolithic disks can be placed together in one housing forming so-called conjoint liquid chromatography (CLC), which combines two different chromatographic modes in one step.
For better understanding of anticancer therapy with Pt-based chemotherapeutics, the quality of pharmaceutical formulations must be assured and the behaviour of the drugs studied by separation and detection of the intact drug and its individual biotransformation species in clinical samples at therapeutically relevant levels. To study the interactions of Pt-based chemotherapeutics with serum proteins, two-dimensional chromatographic separation of serum proteins was suggested, combining size-exclusion and CIM DEAE monolithic.6 Since this procedure is time consuming the potential of the use of CLC was investigated.