Simultaneous determination of polyamines and acetylpolyamines in human urine by capillary electrophoresis with fluorescence detection

Abstract

There has been evidence linking elevated polyamines (PAs) and acetylpolamines (AcPAs) level and cancer. So the simultaneous analysis of these compounds has become important task for cancer diagnosis and antitumor drug monitoring. A simple, fast and inexpensive CZE-LIF method has been developed for the determination of cadaverine (CAD), putrescine (PUT), spermine (SPM), spermidine (SPD), acetylspermine (ASPM), and acetylspermidine (ASPD) in human urine using 4-chloro-7-nitro-2,1,3-benzooxadiazole as a fluorescent reagent. Labeling reaction conditions were systematically investigated and were found to be 20 mM borate buffer at pH 7.4, labeling reaction time, and temperature were 10 min and 70°C, respectively. Under these optimized conditions the four PAs, two AcPAs and the internal standard were separated in 6 min. An Exactive-MS with an ESI source was used for identification of the bis-derivative of the ASPM. The method was validated in term of linearity, LODs, repeatability, intra- and interday assays, recovery, and selectivity. The LODs for CAD, PUT, SPM, SPD, ASPM, and ASPD were found to be 7.6, 10.0, 9.0, 8.8,7.8, and 3.3 nM, respectively. The method was successfully applied for the analysis of PAs and AcPAs in healthy human urine samples.