Determination of melanotan II in rabbit urine using solid-phase extraction sample preparation followed by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography.

A solid-phase extraction (SPE) method has been developed for the isolation of melanotan II from rabbit urine. The proposed extraction method makes it possible to selectively isolate melanotan II without significant loss of the peptide. Standard curves obtained from high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) analysis of spiked urine extracts are linear from 0.1 to 4.0 micrograms/ml. The analytical method is shown to be highly reproducible, giving a relative standard deviation of less than 5% for both between-day and same-day analyses. The accuracy of the method obtained from standard plots ranges from -3.3 to 3.1%.