Recent advances in enantiomer separations by affinity capillary electrophoresis using proteins and peptides

Enantiomer separations by capillary electrophoresis (CE), using proteins as chiral selectors-affinity capillary electrophoresis (ACE) with free soluti ons and capillary electrochromatography (CEC)-with protein immobilized capi llaries, are reviewed. The separation principle, recent advances in this fi eld and some interesting topics are presented. In ACE, various enantiomer s eparations have been already reported using either plasma proteins or egg w hite ones. Miscellaneous proteins were also explored in the last few pears. On the contrary, only a limited number of enantiomer separations have been successfully achieved in CEC. CEC is not yet mature enough to date, and fu rther investigations, such as efficiency, durability and reproducibility of capillaries, will be necessary for the use of routine analyses. The study of enantioselective drug-protein binding is important in pharmaceutical dev elopments. Some applications including high-porformancee CE/frontal analysi s (HPCE/FA) are introduced in this paper. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. Al l rights reserved.