Soluplus, a graft copolymer of polyethylene glycol, vinyl caprolactam and vinyl acetate, is designed to solubilize poorly soluble active pharmaceutical ingredients. A straightforward aqueous gel permeation chromatography method that exploits both size exclusion and adsorption modes of separation was used to separate and quantify the related residual vinyl caprolactam monomer and caprolactam impurity present in Soluplus. This methodology offers a single step analysis of caprolactam and the residual vinyl caprolacatam monomer, yielding similar results to reversed-phase chromatography measurements, which are time-consuming and may involve multi-step sample preparation. The results of this study demonstrate that gel permeation chromatography provides a viable option to traditional reversed-phase chromatography in the quantitative analysis of residual caprolactam and vinyl caprolactam monomers and can be extended to other monomer-polymeric systems.
