Illustration of a simple and versatile scheme for reversing enantiomeric elution order and facilitating enantiomeric impurity determination in capillary electrophoresis

Emerging Developments in Separation Techniques and Analysis of Chiral Pharmaceuticals

Chiral separation, the process of isolating enantiomers from a racemic mixture, holds paramount importance in diverse scientific disciplines. Using chiral separation methods like chromatography and electrophoresis, enantiomers can be isolated and characterized. This study emphasizes the significance of chiral separation in drug development, quality control, environmental analysis, and chemical synthesis, facilitating improved therapeutic outcomes, regulatory compliance, and enhanced industrial processes. Capillary electrophoresis (CE) has emerged as a powerful technique for the analysis of chiral drugs. This review also highlights the significance of CE in chiral drug analysis, emphasizing its high separation efficiency, rapid analysis times, and compatibility with other detection techniques. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) has become a vital technique for chiral drugs analysis. Through the utilization of a chiral stationary phase, HPLC separates enantiomers based on their differential interactions, allowing for the quantification of individual enantiomeric concentrations. This study also emphasizes the significance of HPLC in chiral drug analysis, highlighting its excellent resolution, sensitivity, and applicability. The resolution and enantiomeric analysis of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) hold great importance due to their chiral nature and potential variations in pharmacological effects. Several studies have emphasized the significance of resolving and analyzing the enantiomers of NSAIDs. Enantiomeric analysis provides critical insights into the pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and potential interactions of NSAIDs, aiding in drug design, optimization, and personalized medicine for improved therapeutic outcomes and patient safety. Microfluidics systems have revolutionized chiral separation, offering miniaturization, precise fluid control, and high throughput. Integration of microscale channels and techniques provides a promising platform for on-chip chiral analysis in pharmaceuticals and analytical chemistry. Their applications in techniques such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and capillary electrochromatography (CEC) offer improved resolution and faster analysis times, making them valuable tools for enantiomeric analysis in pharmaceutical, environmental, and biomedical research.

Strategies in method development to quantify enantiomeric impurities using CE

The growing number of chiral new drug substances requires increasing efforts in developing enantioselective methods. According to International conference on Harmonization guidelines, one should quantify the enantiomeric impurity of 0.1% relative to the major constituent. Capillary electrophoresis has evolved into an important tool for the separation of chiral drugs. The common strategies consist of two steps: firstly, initial separation conditions are evaluated. This screening usually focuses on the selection of the appropriate chiral selector. In our study 22 neutral, anionic or cationic cyclodextrins were dissolved in phosphate buffer (pH 2.5, 50 mM, CD conc.: 2.0%). Then they were investigated for the separation of 14 chiral compounds. Secondly, the obtained initial conditions for the enantiomeric separation were optimized in terms of resolution and analysis time. In our approach, important optimized factors including the concentration of the chiral selector (1-10%), the pH of the buffer (2.0-9.0), and the percentage of organic modifier (0-15%) were studied. This common strategy was completed by elaborating final requirements for the quantification of the enantiomeric impurity. A resolution between 3 and 4 was found to be necessary for the racemic mixture during the screening and optimization steps, in order to later allow for peak overloading and thus to sufficiently increase the signal-to-noise ratio. The complete strategy was conducted for atenolol, isoprenaline, verapamil and mandelic acid.

Influence of microemulsion chirality on chromatographic figures of merit in EKC: Results with novel three-chiral-component microemulsions and comparison with one- and two-chiral-component microemulsions

Novel microemulsion formulations containing all chiral components are described for the enantioseparation of six pairs of pharmaceutical enantiomers (atenolol, ephedrine, metoprolol, N-methyl ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, and synephrine). The chiral surfactant dodecoxycarbonylvaline (DDCV, R- and S-), the chiral cosurfactant S-2-hexanol, and the chiral oil diethyl tartrate (R- and S-) were combined to create four different chiral microemulsions, three of which were stable. Results obtained for enantioselectivity, efficiency, and resolution were compared for the triple-chirality systems and the single-chirality system that contained chiral surfactant only. Improvements in enantioselectivity and resolution were achieved by simultaneously incorporating three chiral components into the aggregate. The one-chiral-component microemulsion provided better efficiencies. Enantioselective synergies were identified for the three-chiral-component nanodroplets using a thermodynamic model. Additionally, two types of dual-chirality systems, chiral surfactant/chiral cosurfactant and chiral surfactant/chiral oil, were examined in terms of chromatographic figures of merit, with the former providing much better resolution. The two varieties of two-chiral-component microemulsions gave similar values for enantioselectivity and efficiency. Lastly, the microemulsion formulations were divided into categories based on the number of chiral microemulsion reagents and the average results for each pair of enantiomers were analyzed for trends. In general, enantioselectivity and resolution were enhanced while efficiency was decreased as more chiral components were used to create the pseudostationary phase (PSP).

Enantioselective separation of azole compounds by EKC. Reversal of migration order of enantiomers with CD concentration

The enantioselective separation of a group of six weak base azole compounds was achieved in this work using EKC with three neutral beta-CDs as chiral selectors. The native beta-CD and two other beta-CD derivatives with different types and positions of the substituents on the CD rim ((2-hydroxy)propyl-beta-CD (HP-beta-CD) and heptakis-2,3,6-tri-O-methyl-beta-CD (TM-beta-CD)) were employed. Apparent binding constants for each pair compound-CD were determined in order to study analyte-CD interactions. The best enantiomeric resolutions for miconazole, econazole, and sulconazole were observed with HP-beta-CD whereas for the separation of the enantiomers of ketoconazole, terconazole, and bifonazole, TM-beta-CD was the best chiral selector. The enantioseparations obtained were discussed on the basis of the structure of the compounds taking into account that inclusion into the hydrophobic CD cavity occurred through the phenyl ring closer to the azole group. In addition, a change in the migration order for the enantiomers of two of the compounds studied (ketoconazole and terconazole) with the concentration of HP-beta-CD was observed for the first time.

Two-chiral-component microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography–chiral surfactant and chiral oil: Part 1. Dibutyl tartrate

The first simultaneous use of a chiral surfactant and a chiral oil for microemulsion EKC (MEEKC) is reported. Six stereochemical combinations of dodecoxycarbonylvaline (DDCV: R, S, or racemic, 2.00% w/v), racemic 2-hexanol (1.65% v/v), and dibutyl tartrate (D, L, or racemic, 1.23% v/v) were examined as chiral pseudostationary phases (PSPs) for the separation of six pairs of pharmaceutical enantiomers: pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, N-methyl ephedrine, metoprolol, synephrine, and atenolol. Subtle differences were observed for three chromatographic figures of merit (alpha(enant), alpha(meth), k) among the chiral microemulsions; a moderate difference was observed for efficiency (N) and elution range. Dual-chirality microemulsions provided both the largest and smallest enantioselectivities, due to small positive and negative synergies between the chiral microemulsion components. For the ephedrine family of compounds, dual-chiral microemulsions with surfactant and oil in opposite stereochemical configurations provided higher enantioselectivities than the single-chiral component microemulsion (RXX), whereas dual-chiral microemulsions with surfactant and oil in the same stereochemical configurations provided lower enantioselectivities than RXX. Slight to moderate enantioselective synergies were confirmed using a thermodynamic model. Efficiencies observed with microemulsions comprised of racemic dibutyl tartrate or dibutyl-D-tartrate were significantly higher than those obtained with dibutyl-L-tartrate, with an average difference in plate count of about 25 000. Finally, one two-chiral-component microemulsion (RXS) provided significantly better resolution than the remaining one- and two-chiral-component microemulsions for the ephedrine-based compounds, but only slightly better or equivalent resolution for non-ephedrine compounds.

Why not using capillary electrophoresis in drug analysis?

CE and related methods are well-established techniques in the analysis of biomolecules, such as DNA and proteins. Even though CE is a rather good alternative to HPLC for the evaluation of the impurity profile and the enantiomeric purity of a drug, it is rarely applied. This might be due to the reservation of national licensing authorities and the pharmacopoeia commissions for several reasons. In this review containing some experimental data we report on several drug examples which demonstrate the superiority of CE over HPLC in special cases, i.e., in the analysis of antibiotics, amino acids and peptides, and the determination of enantiomeric purity. However, in order to make the CE techniques more suitable for pharmacopoeial purposes the general methods describing separation methods have to be complemented with the adjustment of the electrophoretic conditions being necessary to satisfy the system suitability criteria without fundamentally modifying the methods. Taken together CE should be more often applied in drug quality control.

Chiral separations by capillary electrophoresis: Recent developments and applications

This paper provides an overview of the different classes of chiral selectors that are used in CE. The main properties of every class are described, together with the mechanism of enantioseparation. Newly introduced selectors are also discussed. Pharmaceutical and biomedical applications published from January 2004 till March 2005 are summarized.

Enantiomeric impurity determination in capillary electrophoresis using a highly-sulfated cyclodextrins-based method

Capillary electrophoresis (CE), using highly-sulfated cyclodextrins as chiral selectors, has been applied to determine the chiral purity of pharmaceutical compounds. A chiral separation strategy, developed earlier for racaemic mixtures, was applied on four basic drugs (propranolol, atenolol, chlorpheniramine and tryptophan methylester). The aim was to develop validated separation methods which allow determination of 0.1% impurity levels of the unwanted enantiomers (distomer) in the presence of 99.9% of the active compound (eutomer). The linearity, quantification limits for the trace enantiomers and the precision of the measurements were determined. In a second part, impurity separations have been simulated in order to evaluate the required resolution when assaying impurities. It is shown that a baseline resolution of 1.5, generally accepted for racaemic mixtures, does not always allow good impurity determinations. Two alternative methods to solve this problem have been proposed.

Development and validation of a separation method for the diastereomers and enantiomers of aziridine-type protease inhibitors

Aziridine derivatives are attracting pharmacological interest as protease inhibitors. Due to their two centers of chirality, the aziridines studied here are mixtures of two diastereomers and corresponding enantiomers. Applying cyclodextrin-modified capillary electrophoresis resulted in a baseline separation of the four isomers. The most robust separation was obtained by means of 2 mM sulfated beta-cyclodextrin in 50 mM phosphate buffer of pH 2.5. Using this method, 0.25% of the trans-diastereomers aziridine could be precisely and accurately quantified in the presence of 99.75% of the cis-isomers. The corrected peak-area ratios, migration times, and resolutions were found to be robust with respect to small variations of voltage, buffer concentrations, pH, temperature, chiral selector concentration, and different lots.

Capillary electrophoresis technologies for screening in drug discovery

The high separation efficiency of capillary electrophoresis (CE), combined with the high selectivity and sensitivity of mass spectrometry (MS) detection offers the potential of unique resolving power and high-throughput capacity to the analysis and structural identification of complex mixtures. Recent advances in CE-MS interfaces and commercially available 96-capillary instruments have made the implementation of routine CE methods for drug screening feasible.:

Assignment of the relative configuration of spiro[4.5]decanes by 13C, 15N and 17O NMR

The relative configuration of 11 1,4-diazaspiro[4.5]decanes (1a-1j and 1m), 15 1,4-oxazaspiro[4.5]decanes (2a-2o) and 10 1,4-dioxaspiro[4.5]decanes (3a-3n) substituted at the 2-, 6-, 7- or 8-position by a methyl group or using the tert-butyl group as a model for the ananchomeric structure is reported. The relative stereochemistry was analyzed by 1H, 13C, 15N and 17O NMR and all isomers present were characterized spectroscopically. Compounds with a methyl group in the six-membered ring show a chair conformation preference with the methyl group in the equatorial position. Compounds with one or two nitrogens exhibit a tautomeric equilibrium between the imine-diazolidine forms, as demonstrated by IR and 13C NMR.