SummaryThis paper describes a method for the separation, by high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC), of a series of polar, ionic, and hydrophilic double conjugates of bile acids amidated at the C-24 carboxyl group with glycine or taurine and sulfonated or glucosylated at hydroxyl groups in the 513-steroid nucleus. The method involves two-dimensional (2D) reversed-phase (RP) HPTLC with the combined use of tetra-n-butylammonium phosphate (TBAP) and methyl as mobile phase additives. Complete separation of the hydrophilic bile acid conjugates, particularly of the recalcitrant pairs of chenodeoxycholic acid and deoxycholic acid conjugates in each group, was achieved by 2D inclusion RPHPTLC by developing with methanol-water-0.5 tool L -1 TBAP, 90:10:5-75:25:5 (v/v) in the first dimension and the same mobile phase containing 5 mM Meq3-CD in the second dimension. The method could be usefully applied to biosynthetic and metabolic studies of bile acids in biological materials.necessary. TLC is, therefore, widely used for the preliminary and/or routine analysis of a wide variety of compounds. Several studies have reported the TLC separation of biologically important bile acids in connection with hepatobiliary diseases [1][2][3]. The compounds separated include unconjugated cholic acid (CA), chenodeoxycholic acid (CDCA), ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA), deoxycholic acid (DCA), and lithocholic acid (LCA), and their conjugates with glycine, taurine or sulfuric acid. As far as we are aware, however, there have been few reports of the TLC analysis of more polar and ionic double conjugates of bile acids, amidated at the C-24 carboxyl group with glycine (or taurine) and sulfonated or glycosylated at the hydroxyl groups in the 513-steroid nucleus, on normal phase (NP) TLC plates with alcohol-acetic acid-water mixtures as the mobile phase [4,5]. According to these papers, separation of all of the double-conjugated pairs of CDCA and DCA was unsuccessful. We have previously reported an efficient method for the separation of the five major bile acids in both the unconjugated and conjugated forms [6]. The method involved the use of two-dimensional (2D) reversed-phase (RP) high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) [7,8] with aqueous methanol (10-30 %) in the first direction and the same mobile phase containing 5 mM methyl 13-cyclodextrin (Me-J3-CD) in the second direction. This paper described the application of this 2D inclusion RPHPTLC method to the complete separation of various types of double-conjugated bile acids.