Development of analytical protocols for rapid analysis of biological samples with flow-gated capillary electrophoresis

Abstract

With the development and improvement of the whole society, people are paying more attention to their health and the protection of the environment, which requires researchers to consider better identification and detection methods for various molecular species. Capillary electrophoresis (CE) and related technologies have been used in the separation, detection, and identification of many organic and inorganic compounds for the past dozens of years because of the advantages of CE, like short analysis time and high separation efficiency. Also, numerous detectors and interfaces can be combined with CE due to the excellent adaptability in order to enhance the performance of detection sensitivity, e.g., laser-induced fluorescence (LIF), mass spectrometry (MS), and electrochemical detection. This thesis is to discuss the determination of essential biomarkers in biological samples on the flow-gated CE-LIF system. It first reports a rapid and sensitive method with the flow-gated CE-LIF system to determine collagen degradation products, including proline, hydroxyproline, and other prolyl dipeptides in human urine samples, which is suited for the early diagnosis of collagen-related diseases. Experimental results prove that this method was capable of the separation and determination of prolyl compounds with good reproducibility, accuracy, sensitivity, and robustness. Second, the utilization of solid-phase extraction (SPE) in the purification and concentration of catecholamines (CAs) highlights the effectiveness of this method as a sample pre-treatment technique for catecholamines in real samples. By effectively removing interfering compounds and enhancing the concentration of the target analytes, SPE contributes to the overall reliability and accuracy of CA analysis.