Analysis of caffeine and paraxanthine in human saliva with ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography for CYP1A2 phenotyping.

Cytochrome P450 1A2 (CYP1A2) plays an important role in drug metabolism. Caffeine (CAF) is converted into paraxanthine (PX) by this enzyme and is used as a xenobiotic substrate to determine the CYP1A2 phenotype in humans. A method for the quantification of CAF and PX in saliva was developed using liquid-liquid extraction with ethyl acetate and analysis with ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography. Peaks from CAF, PX and internal standard were resolved within 6min. The method was validated from 0.05 to 5µgmL(-1) CAF and 0.025-2.5µgmL(-1) PX. Inter- and intra-day accuracies ranged from 91.2 to 107.2% with precisions <13.5%. The limits of detection were 0.16 and 0.63 ngmL(-1) for PX and CAF, respectively. PX/CAF concentration ratios from volunteers were 0.26-1.09 with mean ratios of 0.78±0.26 and 0.38±0.10 for regular and light/non-coffee drinkers, respectively.

Potential of poly(styrene-co-divinylbenzene) monolithic columns for the LC-MS analysis of protein digests.

Two polystyrene-based capillary monolithic columns of different length (50 and 250 mm) were used to evaluate the effects of column length on gradient separation of protein digests. A tryptic digest of a 9-protein mixture was used as a test sample. Peak capacities were determined from selected extracted ion chromatograms, and tandem mass spectrometry data were used for database matching using the MASCOT search engine. Peak capacities and protein identification scores were higher for the long column with all gradients. Peak capacities appear to approach a plateau for longer gradient times; maximum peak capacity was estimated to be 294 for the short column and 370 for the long column. Analyses with similar gradient slope produced a ratio of the peak capacities of 3.36 for the long and the short column, which is slightly higher than the expected value of the square root of the column length ratio. The use of a longer monolith improves peptide separation, as reflected by higher peak capacity, and also increases protein identification, as observed from higher identification scores and a larger number of identified peptides. Attention has also been paid to the peak production rate (PPR, peak capacity per unit time). For short analysis times, the short column produces a higher PPR, while for analysis times longer than 40 min, the PPR of the 250-mm column is higher.

Potential of long capillary monolithic columns for the analysis of protein digests.

The gain in separation efficiency for protein digests using long monolithic columns has been evaluated for a LC-MS system with capillary monolithic columns of different lengths (150 and 750 mm). A mixture of BSA, alpha-casein and beta-casein tryptic digests was used as a test sample. Peak capacity and productivity (peak capacity per unit time) were determined from base peak chromatograms and MS/MS data were used for protein identification by MASCOT database searching. Peak capacity and protein identification scores were higher for the long column. Analyses with similar gradient slope for the two columns produced ratios of the peak capacities that were slightly higher than the expected value of the square root of the column length ratio. Peak capacity ratios varied from 2.7 to 4.0 for four different gradient slopes, while protein identification scores were 2-4 times higher for the long column. Similar values were obtained for the productivity of both columns and the highest productivity was obtained at gradient times of 45 and 75 min for the short and long column, respectively. The use of long monolithic columns improves peptide separation and increases reliability of protein identification for complex digests, especially if longer gradients are chosen.