Pharma & Biopharma

Determination of UV Filters in Sunscreens Using Agilent Captiva EMR—Lipid Cleanup by HPLC

Chemical sunscreens are formulated with ultraviolet (UV)-filtering compounds that protect the skin from sunburn and DNA damage. This Application Note develops and validates a robust method to prepare samples followed by quantitative analysis of the active UV filter ingredients in suncare products. Active ingredients were extracted from sunscreen lotions by organic extraction followed by membrane filtration before HPLC analysis. While the retention time reproducibility of the reference standard analytes was excellent (% RSD ≤0.11), severe retention time drift, baseline shifting, and irregular peak shapes were observed among consecutive injections of sunscreen samples on the column. The chromatographic issues were resolved using Agilent Captiva EMR—Lipid cartridges to remove matrix lipids from the extracted samples. Acceptable levels of quantitative accuracy and recovery (95 to 103.5%) were achieved, with significantly improved retention time consistency for consecutive injections of all the UV filters present in seven over-the-counter suncare products