Simultaneous chiral separation of methylamphetamine and common precursors using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry

Screening of Astec® CHIRALDEX™ G-PN and LIPODEX™ D gas chromatography columns for enantioseparation of amphetamine derivatives

Among different substance classes, New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) comprise chiral amphetamines for stimulant and empathic effects. There is little knowledge in terms of clinical studies about possibly different effects of the two enantiomers of novel amphetamine derivatives. For this reason, there is a big demand for enantioseparation method development of this new substance class. Regarding gas chromatography, cyclodextrins proved to be effective for enantioseparation of NPS. In our attempt, an Astec® Chiraldex™ G-PN column containing 2,6-di-O-pentyl-3-propionyl-γ-cyclodextrin and a Lipodex™ D column containing heptakis-(2,6-di-O-pentyl-O-acetyl)-β-cyclodextrin as chiral selector served as stationary phases in a Shimadzu GCMS-QP2010 SE system. Because of the special coating, maximum temperature is limited to 200 °C isothermal or 220 °C in programmed mode. To ensure detection, trifluoroacetic anhydride (TFAA) was used to increase sample volatility.1 As a result, 35 amphetamines were tested as their TFAA-derivatives. A screening method with a temperature gradient from 140 °C to 200 °C at a heating ramp of 1 °C per minute and final time of 5 min, showed baseline separation for seven and partial separations for 16 trifluoro acetylated amphetamines using the Chiraldex™ G-PN column. Six baseline and nine partial separations were observed with the Lipodex™ D column, respectively.

Recent advances in chiral analysis for biosamples in clinical research and forensic toxicology

This article covers current methods and applications in chiral analysis from 2010 to 2020 for biosamples in clinical research and forensic toxicology. Sample preparation for aqueous and solid biological samples prior to instrumental analysis were discussed in the article. GC, HPLC, capillary electrophoresis and sub/supercritical fluid chromatography provide the efficient tools for chiral drug analysis coupled to fluorescence, UV and MS detectors. The application of chiral analysis is discussed in the article, which involves differentiation between clinical use and drug abuse, pharmacokinetic studies, pharmacology/toxicology evaluations and chiral inversion. Typical chiral analytes, including amphetamines and their analogs, anesthetics, psychotropic drugs, β-blockers and some other chiral compounds, are also reviewed.

Simultaneous detection and quantitation of organic impurities in methamphetamine by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, a complementary technique for methamphetamine profiling

The analysis of organic impurities plays an important role in the impurity profiling of methamphetamine, which in turn provides valuable information about methamphetamine manufacturing, in particular its synthetic route, chemicals, and precursors used. Ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) is ideally suited for this purpose due to its excellent sensitivity, selectivity, and wide linear range in multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. In this study, a dilute-and-shoot UHPLC-MS/MS method was developed for the simultaneous identification and quantitation of 23 organic manufacturing impurities in illicit methamphetamine. The developed method was validated in terms of stability, limit of detection (LOD), lower limit of quantification (LLOQ), accuracy, and precision. More than 100 illicitly prepared methamphetamine samples were analyzed. Due to its ability to detect ephedrine/pseudoephedrine and its high sensitivity for critical target markers (eg, chloro-pseudoephedrine, N-cyclohexylamphetamine, and compounds B and P), more impurities and precursor/pre-precursors were identified and quantified versus the current procedure by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Consequently, more samples could be classified by their synthetic routes. However, the UHPLC-MS/MS method has difficulty in detecting neutral and untargeted emerging manufacturing impurities and can therefore only serve as a complement to the current method. Despite this deficiency, the quantitative information acquired by the presented UHPLC-MS/MS methodology increased the sample discrimination power, thereby enhancing the capacity of methamphetamine profiling program (MPP) to conduct sample-sample comparisons.

Enantiomeric separations of illicit drugs and controlled substances using cyclofructan-based (LARIHC) and cyclobond I 2000 RSP HPLC chiral stationary phases

Recently a novel class of chiral stationary phases (CSPs) based on cyclofructan (CF) has been developed. Cyclofructans are cyclic oligosaccharides that possess a crown ether core and pendent fructofuranose moieties. Herein, we evaluate the applicability of these novel CSPs for the enantiomeric separation of chiral illicit drugs and controlled substances directly without any derivatization. A set of 20 racemic compounds were used to evaluate these columns including 8 primary amines, 5 secondary amines, and 7 tertiary amines. Of the new cyclofructan-based LARIHC columns, 14 enantiomeric separations were obtained including 7 baseline and 7 partial separations. The LARIHC CF6-P column proved to be the most useful in separating illicit drugs and controlled substances accounting for 11 of the 14 optimized separations. The polar organic mode containing small amounts of methanol in acetonitrile was the most useful solvent system for the LARIHC CF6-P CSP. Furthermore, the LARIHC CF7-DMP CSP proved to be valuable for the separation of the tested chiral drugs resulting in four of the optimized enantiomeric separations, whereas the CF6-RN did not yield any optimum separations. The broad selectivity of the LARIHC CF7-DMP CSP is evident as it separated primary, secondary and tertiary amine containing chiral drugs. The compounds that were partially or un-separated using the cyclofructan based columns were screened with a Cyclobond I 2000 RSP column. This CSP provided three baseline and six partial separations.