Stereoselective analysis of racemic psychotropic compounds by HPLC on chiral stationary phase

✍ Scribed by Donald F. Smith; William H. Pirkle

• Book ID: 104651753
• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1986
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 211 KB
• Volume: 89
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0033-3158
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00174381

✦ Synopsis

Many neuronal and behavioral processes are stereoselecrive, which means that they are dependent upon spatial (3-dimensional) features of biologically active molecules (Smith and Lehmann 1984). The usual way of studying stereoselectivity is to compare effects of enantiomers of racemic compounds (Portoghese 1970). A problem in the past has been, however, that methods were lacking for separating the enantiomers of racemic drugs and metabolites and measuring their concentrations at the low levels often present in biological fluids. As a result, there are still many uncertainties concerning effects of enantiomers of psychotropic compounds (Smith 1984a). Recently, Pirkle and coworkers have described methods based on chiral stationary phase (CSP) HPLC techniques for resolving a variety of racemic compounds and for determining the relative proportions of enantiomers in solution (see, for example, Pirkle et al. 1984a, b). Such techniques are very sensitive. Since advances in psychopharmacology depend in part on the use of new analytical procedures, we studied whether these CSP HPLC methods are applicable for separating and measuring the enantiomers of selected racemic psychotropic and neurophysiological compounds.