Enhancing effectiveness of capillary electrophoresis as an analytical tool in the supramolecular acidity modification

The Acid-Base/Deprotonation Equilibrium Can Be Studied with a MicroScale Thermophoresis (MST)

MicroScale thermophoresis (MST) is a rapidly developing bioanalytical technique used routinely for the examination of ligand-target affinity. It has never been used so far for the analysis of acid-base dissociation and the determination of pK_a constant. This work is the-proof-of-concept of this new idea. It demonstrates that the pK_a values obtained from the thermophoretic data are consistent with the reference methods. As a result, the analytical potential and utility of the MST technology can become even greater, especially if the new detection system of thermophoretic movement will be developed in the future. Even now, taking into account the necessity to use fluorescence, the proposed method may be useful in many respects.

Derivatization-free determination of aminoglycosides by CZE-UV in pharmaceutical formulations

Aminoglycosides are a relevant class of antibiotics widely used by medics and veterinaries. There are a variety of reasons that make their determination relevant, such as quality control, environment and food contamination assessment, drug-release studies, among others. The lack of a chromophore makes aminoglycoside spectrophotometric detection particularly challenging, often requiring derivatization. In this work, an indirect detection method, making use of imidazole as a probe, applying CZE was successfully tested. It did not require derivatization, which simplified the sample preparation. Suitable figures of merit were obtained; recoveries between 95 and 105%, adequate repeatability and precision, correlation coefficients (r) above 0.998, and limits of detection (LODs) of 3.2 and 11 mg/L for gentamicin and paromomycin, respectively. As a proof-of-concept, it was also applied in a simple controlled release experiment that was well fitted using the Hill equation.

Acidity constant of pH indicators in the supramolecular systems studied by two CE-based methods compared using the RGB additive color model

Acid-base properties of methyl orange, bromocresol green, bromophenol blue, and bromothymol blue were thoroughly investigated in the past due to their application as colorimetric pH indicators. However, it is still unknown how these properties change upon the supramolecular host-guest interactions. Owing to the growing interest in using supramolecular host-guest interactions to reach expected modification of various physicochemical properties of guests, we decided to address this question in the present article. We estimated the shifts of pK_a values induced by diverse hosts (cyclodextrins, cucurbiturils, calixarenes, micelles, and serum albumin) and performed a thermodynamic analysis of the selected systems. To make a deeper insight, we confronted the aforementioned dyes with the other kinds of molecules studied by us in the past. In overall, the results obtained demonstrate a large multiplicity of possible pK_a behaviors, their poor predictability, and the existence of subtle structure-acidity relationships. In addition, we observed three thermodynamically different mechanisms of pK_a alteration. Therefore, more studies are needed to bring closer the promising perspective of a programmable acidity's tuning. Our methodology was based on capillary electrophoresis (CE) applied in two parallel variants: a classical method based on the fitting of a nonlinear function, and an alternative two-value method (TVM), which requires over twice less measurements to estimate pK_a. To identify the optimal approach for further studies, both methods were comprehensively compared and discussed based on the RGB additive color model, a user-friendly scale that integrates three primary aspects of an analytical method: analytical performance, green chemistry, and practicality.

Flow variation as a factor determining repeatability of the internal standard-based qualitative and quantitative analyses by capillary electrophoresis

The use of migration times and peak areas referred to another sample component - internal standard, brings many benefits in improving reliability of capillary electrophoresis. However, it is quite commonly overlooked that despite relative migration time and peak area ratio are more stable than the absolute values upon alteration in the flow rate, some shift should always be expected. The present work offers a new look at this analytically-important issue. We have derived a simple model allowing to estimate the magnitude of error for the selected pair of molecules of known mobilities upon the given flow alteration. Then, we have confronted the theoretical predictions with the experimental results obtained for the model sample separated in various flow conditions reached by the external pressure manipulation, including several internal standards of different mobilities. A good agreement has been obtained, pointing out that the magnitude of error may be large even for the seemingly "good" internal standards. Several potentially useful means have been tested to address this issue: the use of electrophoretic mobilities and electrophoretic mobility ratios instead migration times in the qualitative analysis, and performing time-correction of peak area ratios, or alternatively, transformation of electropherograms from the time-related scale into the electrophoretic mobility-related scale in the quantitative analysis. We have also considered some additional factors. The results may be of interest for all users dealing with the development and optimization of analytical methods using capillary electrophoresis.