A Novel Approach to Reversed-Phase Preparative High-Performance Liquid Chromatography of Peptides

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Abstract
In this study, we describe a novel approach to preparative liquid chromatography which takes advantage of the different relative hydrophobicities of components of a sample mixture, so that when a column is optimally loaded with an aqueous solution of the sample mixture, there is competition among the sample components for the adsorption sites on the hydrophobic stationary phase. The more hydrophobic components compete more successfully for these sites than more hydrophilic components, which are displaced and immediately eluted from the column. Thus, the major separation takes place in water. Subsequent treatment with an aqueous organic modifier is only required to wash retained components off the column and takes no part in the major separation process. This approach was applied to the preparative purification of mixtures of closely-related peptides, representing the crude peptide mixtures typically obtained from solid-phase peptide synthesis. The excellent separation profiles and high yields of pure peptide products on analytical columns reported in this study demonstrate that this methodology has great potential for preparative separation of a major component from hydrophilic and/or hydrophobic impurities.