Chemically sulfated chitosans are important biomaterials. However, a reliable analytical method for quality control over such compounds is still lacking. In this study, we prepared four different kinds of selectively sulfated chitosans and developed a novel method to analyze their monosaccharide compositions by HPLC. In this method, nitrous acid was used to generate 2, 5-hydro mannose (M), 3-O-sulfated M (M3), 6-O-sulfated M (M6), and 3, 6-O-disulfated M (M9) from the sulfated chitosans. PMP, that is 1-phenyl-3-methyl-5-pyrazolone with a UV absorbance at 245 nm, was used to label all the Ms quantitatively. The monosaccharide compositions for each sulfated chitosan were obtained by C18 HPLC separation and online UV detection of all PMP-labeled Ms. The identities of all Ms were confirmed by MS analysis with the help of standard Ms generated from a heparin pentasaccharide and chitosan. The overall results indicated that the newly developed method had advantages over (13)C NMR in defining the monosaccharide compositions of sulfated chitosans and was useful for quality control purpose.
Keywords: HPLC; Mass spectrometry; Nitrous acid degradation; PMP pre-column derivatization; Sulfated chitosan.
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