Evaluation of hydrophobic interaction between acidic drugs and bovine serum albumin by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography.

The contribution of hydrophobic interaction to the protein binding of acidic drugs has been evaluated in terms of a new hydrophobic index (r-value), defined as the slope of the log-log plots of capacity factor vs. reciprocal of methanol concentration in an aqueous binary mobile phase, measured by the reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography. The logarithms of the binding constants (log K1) of the selected acidic drugs and the related aromatic carboxylic acids indicated linear relationship with their r-values, suggesting that the effect of hydrophobicity on protein binding can be explained similarly to that on the retention onto the reversed-phase stationary ligand.