New Approaches for Analysis of Metabolism Compounds in Hydrophilic Interaction Chromatography

Hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) was developed by Andrew Alpert for separation of highly polar compounds. HILIC is characterized by a high organic mobile phase concentration and the hydrophilic stationary phase. Thus, the retention times of highly polar compounds are increased with the increase of the hydrophilicity of the solutes. Recently, it became necessary to determine highly polar compounds, such as pharmaceutical metabolism products. Therefore, HILIC has been promoted by the demand to analyze polar compounds in a complex matrix. Another reason for the increase in popularity is the widespread use of mass spectrometry (MS) coupled to liquid chromatography (LC). It is easy to promote ionization of several compounds, because there is low concentration of aqueous mobile phase. This review attempts to summarize the ongoing discussion of the separation mechanism and gives an overview of the stationary phases used and the applications addressed with this separation mode in LC.