Efficient enantioselective separation of drug enantiomers by immobilised antibody fragments

There is an increasing need for methods for efficient enantioselective sepa ration and purification of chiral drugs. Genetic engineering provides the m eans for generating recombinant antibodies exhibiting extremely high specif icity for even small molecular mass compounds. Here, recombinant antibody f ragments have been generated for the drug diarylalkyltriazole that contains two chiral centres. Immobilised antibody fragments has been used successfu lly for efficient, step-wise separation of two enantiomers of the drug. Owi ng to the antibody specificity, one enantiomer came out in the flow-through , while the bound enantiomer could be specifically eluted. One of the antib odies tolerated solvents required both for dissolving the target molecules and for their elution for extended times and was shown to function over mul tiple cycles of the separation process. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.