Recent Trends in Chiral Separation-A Collective Paradigm of Selected Chiral Impurities

Enhancement of chiral drugs separation by a novel adjustable gravity mediated capillary electrophoresis combined with sulfonic propyl ether β-CD polymer

A water-soluble negative sulfonic propyl ether β-CD polymer (SPE-β-CDP) to be used as chiral selector in capillary electrophoresis (CE) was polymerized. The sulfonic substitution degree of each β-CD in SPE-β-CDP was statistically homogenized. The only one negative peak in electrophoretogram with indirect ultraviolate method proved its uniformity of electrophoretic behavior. There were 7.12 sulfonic substitution in β-CD unit and 164 μmole β-CD units in each gram of SPE-β-CDP, which corresponded a molecular weight of 7000 or more. Compared with monomer, SPE-β-CDP was lower effect on electrical current of CE, indicating a high concentration of SPE-β-CDP could be added. Its separation ability was verified by 12 chiral drugs. SPE-β-CDP also showed advantages of good water solubility, easy preparation and recovery to reduce the overall cost. However, five of 12 chiral drugs were hardly to be fully separated which was normal for any kind of chiral selector. A newly adjustable gravity mediated capillary electrophoresis (AGM-CE) technology was proposed and combined with SPE-β-CDP to enhance the chiral separation efficiencies of propranolol, salbutamol, omeprazole, ofloxacin and phenoxybenzamine which were markedly improved to 3.02, 1.17, 7.63, 4.14, and 2.81, respectively. Furthermore, its gradient mode (AGMg-CE) was also used to improve resolution through utilizing the zero mobility point, at which the effective apparent mobility of one racemate was zero. Resolutions of five chiral drugs were significantly improved, especially resolution of carvedilol changed from 0.43 to 1.0. These indicated SPE-β-CDP as chiral selector, AGM-CE and AGMg-CE as new CE technologies had a great potential in chiral separation.

Content and Composition of Phospholipids, Fatty Acids and Sterols in Commercial Natural Phospholipid Excipients

Background:

Phospholipids are widely used in food and pharmaceutical industry as functional excipients. In spite of the many analytical methods reported, there are very limited reports concerning systematic research and comparison of phospholipid excipients.

Objective:

To present a comprehensive evaluation of commercial natural phospholipid excipients (CNPEs).

Methods:

Seventeen batches of CNPEs from five manufacturing enterprises, isolated either from soybean or egg yolk, were investigated. The content and composition of phospholipids, fatty acids and sterols as a whole were considered as the evaluative index of CNPEs. Eight kinds of phospholipids were determined by Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (SFC), twenty-one kinds of fatty acids were determined by Gas Chromatography (GC) after boron trifluoride-methanol derivatization, and nine kinds of sterols were determined by High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) after separation and derivatization of the unsaponifiable matter. Cluster analysis was employed for the classification and identification of the CNPEs.

Results:

The results showed that each kind of CNPEs had its characteristic content and composition of phospholipids, fatty acids and sterols. Seventeen batches of samples were divided into eight groups in cluster analysis. CNPEs of the same type from different source (soybean or egg yolk) or enterprises presented different content and composition of phospholipids, fatty acids and sterols.

Conclusion:

Each type of CNPEs had its characteristic content and composition of phospholipid, fatty acid and sterol. The compositions of phospholipid, fatty acid and sterol as a whole can be applied as an indicator of the quality and characteristics for CNPEs.

An appraisal of experimental designs: Application to enantioselective capillary electromigration techniques

Enantioresolution processes are vital tools for investigating the enantioselectivities of chiral compounds. An analyst resolves to optimize enantioresolution conditions once they are determined. Generally, optimization is conducted by a one-factor-at-a-time (OFAT) approach. Although this approach may determine an adequate condition for the method, it does not often allow the estimation of the real optimum condition. Experimental designs are conducive for the optimization of enantioresolution methods via capillary electromigration techniques (CETs). They can efficiently extract information from the behavior of a method and enable the estimation of the real optimum condition. Furthermore, the application of the analytical quality by design (AQbD) approach to the development of CET-based enantioselective methods is a trend. This article (i) offers an overview of the application of experimental designs to the development of enantioselective methods from 2015 to mid-2020, (ii) reveals the experimental designs that are presently employed in CET-based enantioresolutions, and (iii) offers a critical point of view on how the different experimental designs can aid the optimization of enantioresolution processes by considering the method parameters.