Enantiospecific analysis by capillary electrophoresis: Applications in drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics

Enantiospecific analysis has an important role in drug metabolism and pharm acokinetic investigations and its now no longer acceptable to determine tot al drug, or metabolite, concentrations following the administration of a ra cemate. Inspite of the fact that capillary electrophoresis (CE) has become an essential technique in pharmaceutical and enantiospecific analysis, the chromatographic methodologies remain the most commonly used approach for th e determination of the enantiomeric composition of drugs in biological flui ds. The application of CE to bioanalysis has been slow, which is in part as sociated with the complexity of biological matrices together with the relat ively poor concentration limits of detection achievable. However, as a resu lt of its verstility, high separation efficiency, minimal sample requiremen ts, speed of analysis and low consumable expense CE is likely to play an in creasingly significant role in the area. This review present an oberview of enantiospecific CE in bioanalysis in which the approaches to enantiomeric resolution and the problems associated with biological matrices are briefly discussed. The application of enantiospecific CE to samples of biological origin is illustrated using examples where the methodology has either solve d an analytical problem, or provided a useful alternative to the currently available chromatographic methods. Such improvements in methodology are ass ociated with either the high separation efficiency and/or microanalytical c apabilities of the technique. Enantiospecific CE will not replace the chrom atographic methodologies but does provide the bioanalyst with a useful addi tion to his armamentarium.