Identification of the oxidation products of cysteamine and cystamine by CE-MS interfaced by a noncommercial electrospray ionization source

Sodium cysteamine phosphate is a prodrug derivative of cysteamine that can be used in cystinosis treatment. Although titrimetric assays are very well established and precise, iodimetric determination of sodium cysteamine phosphate requires considerably more carefulness and time from the analyst than usual. The possibility to assess sodium cysteamine phosphate by CE was evaluated by means of the quantification of its oxidation product, cystamine, which is a more suitable substance to be used as primary standard than sodium cysteamine phosphate. Apparently, this approach should be straightforward, but systematic differences between the results obtained with CE and titrimetric assays were noticed. MS and CE-MS were employed to aid in the investigation of the possible causes of imprecision of the sodium cysteamine phosphate titration and CE determination. For this purpose, a simple and inexpensive ESI source was constructed. It was observed that cystamine is not the final product of the cysteamine and/or sodium cysteamine phosphate iodine-oxidation and other species besides cystamine may be formed depending on the reaction conditions, which explains the difficulties observed in the sodium cysteamine phosphate quantification.