Analysis of Antitumor Antibiotics by High Pressure Liquid Chromatography (HPLC)

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Abstract
Cancer chemotherapy is a concern of many people today: laboratory scientists, clinicians, cancer victims and news reporters. Their hopes for a cancer cure are always raised when a new chemotherapeutic agent is discovered in the laboratory and shows some promising characteristics towards clinical application. Some of the agents that have been discovered are of natural origin(1), and are complex structures of unknown composition; others are enzymes or antibiotics. The antibiotics are obtained mostly from fermentations, but are also derived from plants or marine animals. Considerable efforts are being made in laboratories to purify these antibiotics to homogeneity and to determine their structure, mode of action, toxicity and applicability to clinical cancer chemotherapy. All these complex functions require analytical support. One of the most modern analytical tools, high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC), is used with increasing frequency to analyze these antitumor antibiotics in different media and for different reasons.