Capillary electrophoresis with indirect UV detection for the determination of stabilizers and citrates present in human albumin solutions

Sodium caprylate and N-acetyltryptophan are the most frequently used stabilizers that protect the albumin from aggregation or heat induced denaturation. In turn citrates – excipients remaining after fractionation process – can be treated as by-product favoring leaching aluminum out of glass containers whilst albumin solution is stored. With ionic nature these substances have all the markings of a subject for capillary electrophoresis analysis. Thus CE methods were proposed as new approach for quality control of human albumin solution in terms of determination of stabilizers and citrates residue.Human albumin solutions both 5% and 20% from various manufacturers were tested. Indirect detection mode was set to provide sufficient detectability of analytes lacking of chromophores. As being anions analytes were separated with reversed electroosmotic flow. As a result of method optimization two background electrolytes based on p-hydroxybenzoic acid and 2,6-pyridinedicarboxylic acid were selected for stabilizers and citrates separation, respectively. The optimized methods were successfully validated. For citrates that require quantification below 100 μM the method demonstrated the precision less than 4% and the limit of detection at 4 μM. In order to check the new methods accuracy and applicability the samples were additionally tested with selected reference methods. The proposed methods allow reliable quantification of stabilizers and citrates in human albumin solution that was confirmed by method validation as well as result comparison with reference methods. The CE methods are considered to be suitable for quality control yet simplifying and reducing cost of analysis.