Chromatography Forum

Hello!

Any help is greatly appreciated.

I am seeking to detect a product called ActiveTR creatine via HPLC. It is micro-encapsulated so it does not show any peaks when we use our in house method for creatine monohydrate. I do not know what the encapsulation material is all I know is that the encapsulation makes the creatine water and acid stable and that this makes it better absorb in the blood. I spoke with the product developer and they verified that an extraction is necessary prior to analysis, but they havent disclosed much else to me due to their patent....Any ideas on how to remove the encapsulation?

You can check the website. Usually, encapsulation ingredients are plastics or gelatin. I encountered the same problem with Vitamin A ~30 years ago.

Try suspending the sample in about 5 mL mixture of Methanol and Water. Then add 3 mL of 30% Hydrogen Peroxide and slightly heat the solution. Cool and dilute to 10 mL for analysis.

Thank you very much for that idea, I plan to try it out on Monday.

If the encapsulation is for water and acid stability you might want to try a slightly basic extraction. Many of these types of things are designed to allow the content to survive through the stomach where it is acidic but to begin release once it exits the stomach where the pH is closer to 8.

Yes I've tried a sodium bicarbonate solution about pH 7.9 and then I tried water with ammonium hydroxide pH about 9.5 and nothing worked.

I also tried HPLC chemist's idea with the methanol water peroxide solution and this did not work either.

Damn.

If it is lipid soluble maybe try Hexane.

have you looked on their patent?
"Google" found some for creatin encapsulation with mainly hydrolsed whey protein. Don.t know if it's the product you're looking at.
So you.ll need to find a way to crack that protein shell.
Maybe by the aid of some enzymes.

I like Hollow's idea. Try trypsin and papain (can't hurt).

Hmm yes Hollow's idea does sound neat to try. I started sort of thinking along the lines of breaking proteins yesterday and decided to try SDS but alas didn't work. I don't think we have trypsin and papain on hand in the lab just pepsin. But I can definitely plan to order those today. I plan to tryout pepsin today in the meantime.

Thanks to everyone for the help! : )

Also thanks for the hexane idea. I can try this too. lol something gotta work