Analytical and preparative capillary zone electrophoresis of opioid peptides Review Article

Capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) is a liquid phase separation technique that can be used to purify and to analyze peptides in complex biological tissues or fluids. The application of CZE to opioid peptides is discussed in this review. The review addresses the processes for rationalizing and optimizing important experimental parameters of CZE such as pH, buffer, loading limit, capillary diameter, and fraction collection for those neuropeptides. Preparative CZE at different pH values was performed with capillaries ≥100 μm ID. A sufficient quantity of leucine enkephalin could be purified from a bovine pituitary by preparative CZE, and its mass spectrum was obtained by off-line mass spectrometry (MS) detection. Preparative CZE with automatic fraction collection is proven useful as a stand-alone, high-performance separation technique for sample preparation from a biological source.