Determination of adriamycin and daunorubicin in urine by high-performance liquid chromatography with laser fluorometric detection.

A separation and detection scheme is presented for the determination of the antitumor drugs adriamycin and daunorubicin in human urine. Separation is accomplished by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography and the drugs are detected down to the low picogram level by laser excited fluorescence using a unique fiber optic based flow-cell. Excellent detector selectivity and linearity are reported, and some of the factors influencing the performance of the detector are discussed. Possible extension of the procedure to other biologically important determinations are mentioned.