The in situ acetylation of an immobilized human serum albumin chiral stationary phase for high-performance liquid chromatography in the examination of drug-protein binding phenomena.

The in situ modification of an immobilized human serum albumin (HSA) high-performance liquid chromatographic chiral stationary phase by p-nitrophenyl acetate is reported. This procedure, which is thought to affect primarily a single reactive tyrosine residue within the protein structure, influenced the chromatographic retention and enantioselectivity factors of a wide range of solutes. For certain solutes, increases in both capacity factor and chiral resolution were observed. Ultrafiltration studies on representative test solutes using free HSA, treated in a similar manner to the immobilized protein, gave similar results as the chromatographic observations, indicating that the latter effects are not artifactual results of immobilization. The effect of the modification of HSA on the binding behavior of drugs reportedly sharing the site predominantly affected by the derivatization, namely, the indole-benzodiazepine binding site, varied greatly. This observation suggests that the affected binding area is not a single, tightly structurally defined site.