High pressure liquid chromatographic identification of hyaluronic acid and chondroitin sulphate disaccharides.

In this report we describe a system capable of resolving all of the known unsaturated disaccharides derived from the chondroitin sulphates, dermatan sulphate and hyaluronic acid by chondroitinase digestion. This system is superior to others in that the non-sulphated and mono-, di- and tri-sulphated disaccharides can be separated with good resolution in approximately 40 min in an isocratic solvent. The system employs an amino-cyano silica gel column (Whatman Partisil 5 PAC, 25 cm) and is eluted with an isocratic solvent consisting of 48% (v/v) acetonitrile, 14% (v/v) methanol and 38% (v/v) aqueous buffer. This aqueous buffer contains 0.5 M Tris-HCl, 0.1 M boric acid, 23.4 mM sulphuric acid, pH 8.0. UV absorption is monitored at 229 nm and for most disaccharides as little as 150 ng can be reliably determined. The addition of boric acid to the eluent is essential for good resolution of all components and the addition of low concentrations of sulphuric acid is used to control the elution times of various components. The system was applied to the analysis of glycosaminoglycan standards and excellent agreement with previous compositional analyses was obtained.