Micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography and data alignment analysis: a new tool in urine profiling.

The complex nature of biofluids demands efficient, sensitive and high-resolution analytical methodologies to examine how the 'metabolic fingerprint' changes during disease. This paper describes how sulphated beta-cyclodextrin-modified micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography (SbetaCD-MECC) has been combined with data alignment analysis and may prove a useful new tool in urine profiling, allowing for separation of over 80 urinary analytes in under 25 min. The optimised and validated SbetaCD-MECC methodology combined with data alignment analysis provides rapid identification of 'mismatches' between urine profiles which are not easily detected with the naked eye as well as a 'similarity score' which indicates the total sum of differences between one profile and another. The combination of SbetaCD-MECC with data alignment software should prove a useful alternative tool in metabonomic studies for rapid comparison of urine profiles.