CHIRAL SEPARATIONS OF ENANTIOMERIC PHARMACEUTICALS BY CAPILLARY ELECTROPHORESIS USING SULPHOBUTYL ETHER BETA-CYCLODEXTRIN AS ISOMER SELECTOR

Capillary electrophoresis has developed into an extremely useful techn ique for the separation of optical isomers, High efficiencies and the availability of many types of isomer selectors allowing rapid and inex pensive methods development make capillary electrophoresis (CE) an att ractive alternative to gas chromatography (GC) and high-pressure liqui d chromatography (HPLC) for the determination of chiral purity, In thi s research the separation of the enantiomers of some chiral pharmaceut icals was investigated using anionic sulphobutyl ether-beta-cyclodextr ins as isomer selectors, These chiral selectors have a large countercu rrent mobility, making them inherently advantageous as selectors as co mpared to neutral cyclodextrins, The effects of pH, buffer composition and selector concentration on the chiral separation of these compound s was investigated, All of the compounds studied were successfully res olved by the suphobutyl ether beta-cyclodextrins (SBE-beta-CDs) typica lly with run times of less than 20 min using low concentrations of the SEE selector (1-5 mM). (C) 1997 by John Whey & Sons, Ltd.