ABSTRACT
Among the most difficult problems facing the researcher in chemistry and biology are the isolation, purification, and identification of compounds in a mixture. This is especially true in pharmacology and toxicology since physiological fluids or cell extracts may contain hundreds of complex molecules with similar solubility properties. The development of high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) has made possible the rapid analysis of nonvolatile, ionic, thermally labile compounds that were previously difficult or almost impossible to separate. Excellent progress has been made in the last 4 years in the application of high-pressure liquid chromatography in monitoring the disposition of drugs in man and animals. Good sample preparation is of the utmost importance to prevent sizable quantitative errors. Several groups of investigators have published HPLC base-line studies of the nucleotide patterns of various normal cells, such as the formed elements of human blood, rat brain, rat liver, and human urine.
