Capillary electrochromatographic chiral separations with potential for pharmaceutical analysis.

The use of capillary electrochromatography as a chiral separation technique for pharmaceutical applications is reviewed. Publications of the past 10 years that provide a potential practical application in pharmaceutical analysis are considered. Method development or validation, separation strategies, and potential routine analysis by the methods/applications cited are the main subjects on which we focused our attention. The indirect chiral separation method was only used once in CEC mode. In the direct chiral separations, the use of chiral stationary phases was obviously preferred over the use of chiral mobile phases with non-chiral stationary phases. Amongst the chiral stationary phases, those based on macrocyclic antibiotics and polysaccharide selectors were the most frequently used. Monolithic stationary phases also have several applications, but not so extended as those with packed capillary electrochromatography. The considered papers not only describe the applicability of the technique for relatively large sets of chiral analytes, they also showed that various types of stationary phases can be produced in-house in a simple manner. However, to survive as a mature separation technique, considerable time and effort are still needed to solve some disadvantages currently characterizing capillary electrochromatography.