Analytics of the therapeutic peptide aviptadil by sheathless CE-MS and comparison with nanoRP-HPLC-MS

Purification and quality control of therapeutic peptides is often performed by one single method, RP-HPLC. As usage of an orthogonal technique is highly advisable for quality assurance, capillary electrophoresis (CE) employing a coated capillary coupled via a sheathless interface to a mass spectrometer was applied in parallel. The basic therapeutic peptide aviptadil served as a model substance to study the impurity profiles revealing 15 detectable impurities using CE-MS, two were detected by an appropriate nanoRP-HPLC-MS method. None of the impurities detected by CE were observed in LC and vice versa. The LOD in CE-MS was determined in the base peak electropherogram at ∼1fmol, a value 2500 times smaller than the LOD found in nanoRP-HPLC-MS (3pmol). In nanoRP-HPLC-MS only 0.2% of the extrapolated CE-MS signal for a 25ng aviptadil load was observed. We conclude that both, the LOD as well as the impurity profile of aviptadil, as analyzed by nanoRP-HPLC are influenced by both, the ligand-derivatized silica matrix and the flow-rate. Peptides may disappear completely and their variable emergence may lead to the determination of incorrect ratios as present in the sample.