High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC): a rapid, flexible and sensitive method for separating islet proinsulin...

Evaluating islet function in vitro involves studying both insulin biosynthesis and release. For the former, it is necessary to resolve insulin from its precursor, proinsulin. This has been achieved in the past by various procedures, each of which suffers from major drawbacks in terms of resolution and the time involved. We show here that reversed phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) outperforms previous methods for separating proinsulin from insulin in islet extracts without any prepurification or concentration steps. This HPLC method is rapid (90 min for a complete cycle, including washing the column) and reproducible, while allowing for unambiguous separation and quantification of proinsulin and insulin.