Purpose. The purpose of this study was to identify four major degradation products, which were formed during a stress study of pexiganan (a 22-mer peptide) in a 1% formulation.Methods. The degradation products were isolated and characterized by LC/MS, tryptic and aminopeptidase digests.Results. One of the degradation products was shown to be des-gly(1)-pexiganan. The other three are structural isomers of N-glyoxylyl-des-gly(1)-pexiganan. These isomers undergo reversible inter-conversions, as well as decompose irreversibly to des-gly(1)-pexiganan. Thus, all the impurities were formed from a single oxidation product of pexiganan, N-glyoxylyl-des-gly(1)-pexiganan. The aldehyde group of the glyoxylyl residue and the NH-amide of the adjacent isoleucine residue form a piperazinedione derivative of des-gly(1)-pexiganan. This heterocyclic compound rearranges to other tautomers or back to the N-glyoxylyl compound (see Fig. 3). Tryptic digests of the three degradation products showed that their N-terminal segment produced N-glyoxylyl-I-G-K whereas the N-terminal segment of pexiganan produced G-I-G-K. All the other tryptic-digest segments were identical to those formed in pexiganan. The LC/MS of the N-terminal segment and of synthetic N-glyoxylyl-I-G-K were identical. The enzymatic resistance of the three impurities to undergo aminopeptidase-M cleavage further supported the conclusion that their N-terminal amino residues are substituted.Conclusions. After a year under stress conditions 1% pexiganan cream lost about 15% of the active component to oxidative-deamination,(4) where the N-terminal glycine residue was oxidized to N-glyoxylyl-des-gly(1)-pexiganan. The other nine E-amino lysine-residues of the peptide stayed intact. This oxidation product inter-converted and formed two additional impurities, tautomers of piperazinedionyl-des-gly(1)-pexiganan, and decomposed to des-gly(1)-pexiganan, the forth impurity.