The structural characterization of CS/DS takes advantage of specific lyases such as chondroitinase ABC, AC and B, which specifically degrade galactosaminoglycans depending on the presence of IdoA or GlcA. The development of high-resolution HPLC systems with pre- or post-column fluorescent derivatization has enabled the separation and quantitation of the various building blocks 10,11. These methods can only determine the degree of sulfation and the occurrence of IdoA- and GlcA-blocks. However, detailed sequence analysis is not possible. The advent of sensitive MS with different fragmentation procedures has lead to promising results 12,13. Recently, the complete sequence determination of the chondroitin sulfate in bikunin has been accomplished 14.
