The studies have shown that glucosamine (GluN) and mannosamine (ManN) are important nutrients for the formation of chondrocytes, while galactosamine (GalN) is a hepatotoxin with high selectivity. Therefore, the separation and detection of aminosaccharide isomers are of critical significance for pharmaceutical quality monitoring. In this work, a novel method was established for the separation and direct determination of GluN and its isomers (GalN and ManN) based on capillary electrophoresis with amperometric detection. The critical factors affecting electrophoretic separation and electrochemical detection were investigated in detail. Under the optimum conditions, three aminosaccharide isomers and their precursor monosaccharides (glucose, galactose, and mannose) can achieve baseline separation. The limits of detection reached 0.070-0.23 µg/mL (S/N = 3), showing good linearity within two orders of magnitude (R2 > 0.99), and the recovery data were in the range of 96.0%-107.8%. This developed method has been applied for the analysis of aminosaccharide pharmaceuticals in different dosage forms. This proposed method is simple to operate, requires no derivatization, and is environmentally friendly, providing an alternative method for the direct determination of aminosaccharides in pharmaceutical formulations. Furthermore, the greenness and eco-friendliness of this developed method were assessed by the green analytical procedure index, analytical greenness, and analytical eco-scale tools.
Keywords: aminosaccharide isomer; amperometric detection; capillary electrophoresis; glucosamine; pharmaceutical formulations.
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