Optimization of enantiomeric separations in capillary electrophoresis by applying a design of experiments approach.

During early-phase pharmaceutical development, it is important to find an initial separation of enantiomeric compounds quickly in order to determine the enantiomeric purity of chiral drug substances. Highly selective screening methods are necessary to analyze the products to discover a satisfactory separation of the enantiomeric compounds. A screening approach based on the use of mixtures of multiple cyclodextrins in chiral capillary electrophoresis was employed to find the initial separation of chiral compounds. In a later phase of development, these complex methods need to be simplified for transferability. This study describes the simplification of the complex mixture of cyclodextrins into a single or dual system of only the enantioselective cyclodextrins. This was achieved by applying fractional factorial experimental designs to select the cyclodextrins that were responsible for the enantiomeric separation and response surface modeling designs for the optimization of the separation. In order to obtain robust methods, the concentration of the chiral selector, together with other important electrophoretic method parameters such as the concentration of the background electrolyte, pH, and run voltage, were optimized by employing a Box-Behnken experimental design.