[Frontiers in Bioscience E4, 1795-1801, January 1, 2012]

Polyamines analysis by HPLC and their application as tumor markers

Shanji Fu1, 2, Chen Xiao2, 3, Weiming Zhao1, Xiuping Yu1

1Institute of Pathogen Biology, Medical School of Shandong University, Jinan 250012, China, 2Department of Clinical Laboratory, Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, Jinan 250012, China, 3 Shandong University, Jinan 250012, China

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Abstract
2. Introduction
3. Materials and methods
3.1. Materials
3.2. Methods
3.2.1. Polyamines determination by HPLC
3.2.1.1. Sample preparation
3.2.1.2. Derivatization
3.2.1.3. Chromatographic conditions
3.2.2. Determination of other tumor markers except polyamines
4. Results and Discussion
4.1. Results of polyamines determination
4.2. Validation of the method
4.2.1. Linearity
4.2.2. Precision
4.2.3. Recovery
4.2.4. Detection limits
4.3. Comparison between polyamines and other tumor markers
4.4. The value of polyamines as tumor markers in 11 cancers
5. Discussion
6. Acknowledgments
7. References

1. ABSTRACT

Cancers are one of the main causes of human deaths globally. Great effort has been dedicated to the search for sensitive and specific markers of cancer. Polyamines including mainly putrescine (PUT), spermidine (SPD), and spermine (SP), are promising tumor markers since their excretion is frequently elevated in patients with various types of cancers. In the present study, we developed an efficient high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method for the determination of polyamines in human serum using dansyl chloride for pre-column derivatization. All polyamines were separated within 10 min. The analytical method is simple, rapid, and highly reproducible. We applied of 11 cancers as objects of study, and made comparisons between polyamines and other 24 common tumor markers with six indexes: specificity, sensitivity, negative predictive value, positive predictive value, total effective, and the mean value. We drew the conclusion that polyamines are promising tumor markers, and they might be of great value in diagnosing cancers, predicting therapeutic success, or indicating the relapse of tumors.