Sensitivity enhancement in capillary electrophoresis and their applications for analyses of pharmaceutical and related biochemical substances

This review aims to illustrate sensitivity enhancement methods in capillary electrophoresis (CE) and their applications for pharmaceutical and related biochemical substance analyses. The first two parts of the article describe the introduction and principle of CE. The main part focuses on strategies for sensitivity improvement in CE including detector and capillary technologies and pre-concentration techniques. Applications of these techniques for pharmaceutical and biomedical substance analyses are surveyed during the years 2018-2021. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Factorial design applied to a non-aqueous capillary electrophoresis method for the separation of β-agonists

The aim of this work was to study the effects of both chemical and instrumental parameters on the separation of beta-agonists (clenbuterol (CLE), salbutamol (SAL) and terbutaline (TER)) by non-aqueous capillary electrophoresis (NACE) method. Due to the number of parameters involved and their interactions, factorial experimental designs (EDs) at two levels was applied to investigate the influence of experimental factors (ionic strength of the background electrolyte (BGE), organic solvent, injection time, voltage and temperature) in sets of several CE responses (resolution, (RS), number of theoretical plate (N), tailing factor (TF) and migration time (tm)). As a compromise between the four responses, the optimum condition was obtained in 18 mM ammonium acetate in methanol (MeOH):acetonitrile (ACN):glacial acetic acid (66:33:1%, v/v/v) using an injection time of 4 s, the voltage and the temperature of 28 kV and 24 degrees C, respectively. The proposed NACE permitted the baseline separation of the three beta-agonists within 10.5 min with good repeatability (%RSD < 3.5%) and linearity (r2 > 0.99). The developed method was applicable for the analysis of the beta-agonists in syrup and tablets and the NACE condition was compatible with a mass spectrometer detector.

Precision improvement for the analysis of flavonoids in selected Thai plants by capillary zone electrophoresis

A capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) method for the analyses of kaempferol in Centella asiatica and Rosa hybrids and rutin in Chromolaena odorata was developed. The optimization was performed on analyses of flavonoids (e.g., rutin, kaempferol, quercetin, myricetin, and apigenin) and organic carboxylic acids (e.g., ethacrynic acid and xanthene-9-carboxylic acid) by investigation of the effects of types and amounts of organic modifiers, background electrolyte concentrations, temperature, and voltage. Baseline separation (R(s) = 2.83) of the compounds was achieved within 10 min in 20 mM NaH2PO4 - Na2HPO4 (pH 8.0) containing 10% v/v ACN and 6% v/v MeOH using a voltage of 25 kV, a temperature of 30 degrees C, and a detection wavelength set at 220 nm. The application of the corrected migration time (t(c)), using ethacrynic acid as the single marker, was efficient to improve the precision of flavonoid identification (% relative standard deviation (RSD) = 0.65%). The method linearity was excellent (r2 > 0.999) over 50-150 microg/mL. Precision (%RSD < 1.66%) and recoveries were good (> 96% and %RSDs < 1.70%) with detection and quantitation limits of 2.23 and 7.14 microg/mL, respectively. Kaempferol in C. asiatica and R. hybrids was 0.014 g/100 g (%RSD = 0.59%) and 0.044 g/100 g (%RSD = 1.04%), respectively, and rutin in C. odorata was 0.088 g/100 g (%RSD = 0.06%).