A preparative high performance liquid chromatography method for separation of lecithin: comparison to thin-layer chromatography.

We have developed a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method to separate lecithin from other phospholipid classes and to obtain lecithin from biologic materials. The separation was performed on a preparative 10-micron Spherisorb column with an optimized solvent system consisting of the following components: acetonitrile, isopropanol, methanol, water, and trifluoroacetic acid. The advantages of this method are the use of an isocratic solvent system limited to about 30 min and the very good separation of the phosphatidyl-choline fraction from the sphingomyelin fraction. Furthermore, the HPLC method has a better recovery rate than the thin-layer chromatography method, and it can be run under automatic control.