Chapter 10 Biomedical applications of directly–coupled chromatography—nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and mass spectrometry (MS)

Abstract

This chapter describes the biomedical applications of directly coupled chromatography–nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and mass spectrometry (MS). The progress in the coupling of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and related techniques with NMR spectroscopy over the past decade has been very rapid. HPLC remains one of the principal methods for the separation of chemical mixtures and quantitation of components. The numerous applications of the technique in biomedical analysis are evidence of its utility and the number of reports of the use of HPLC–NMR in this area has increased marking the transition of HPLC–NMR from a research technique to a routine analytic methodology. Further developments leading to the use of multiple hyphenation (hypernation) with HPLC–NMR–MS and higher concatenations have also begun to generate applications. With further technological advances in the areas of miniaturized flow probes for use with capillary separations and cryoprobes leading to lower sample requirements, the usefulness of NMR coupled to separations has increased.