The Petasis reaction is the multi-component reaction of carbonyl compound, amine and arylboronic acid to form α-amino acid or β-aminoalcohol. In the present work, as a first analytical application of the Petasis reaction, a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with fluorescence detection method was developed for the determination of glyoxylic acid. The glyoxylic acid was derivatized with 1-pyrene boronic acid as a fluorescent arylboronic acid in the presence of N-methylbutylamine as an amine to give the fluorescent α-amino acid. The HPLC separation of fluorescent derivative was performed within 30 min on an octyl column with a gradient elution of acetonitrile and 50 mM acetate buffer (pH 4.0). The detection limit (S/N=3) for glyoxylic acid was 5.0 nM (20 fmol/injection). Finally, the proposed method could be applied to determine the glyoxylic acid concentration in human urine without interferences from biological components.