Developing and Optimizing an Immunoaffinity Cleanup Technique for Determination of Quinolones from Chicken Muscle

An immunoaffinity chromatographic method was developed using an antibody mediated immunosorbent to selectively extract and purify 10 quinolones (marbofloxacin, norfloxacin, ciprofloxacin, lomefloxacin, danofloxacin, enrofloxacin, difloxacin, sarafloxacin, oxolinic acid, and flumequine) in chicken muscle followed by HPLC. The operating conditions of the immunoaffinity chromatography (IAC) column were optimized, and the IAC has been successfully used for the isolation and purification of 10 quinolones from chicken muscle tissue. The optimized immunoaffinity column sample cleanup procedure combined with HPLC coupling to fluorescence detection afforded low limits of detection (0.1 ng g−1 for danfloxacin and 0.15 ng g−1 for all other quinolones tested). The method was also applied to determine quinolone residues in commercial muscle samples.