Chromatographia (2011) 73:197–198 DOI 10.1007/s10337-010-1812-6
BOOK REVIEW
A. Van Eeckhaut and Y. Michotte (Eds.): Chiral Separations by Capillary Electrophoresis Colin F. Poole
Published online: 14 January 2011 Ă“ Springer-Verlag 2011 Bibliography Chiral Separations by Capillary Electrophoresis A. van Eeckhaut and Y. Michotte (Eds.) CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, USA, 2010, pp xvii +525 ISBN 978-1-4200-6933-4 EUR 130.99, USD 169.95
This is a book that lives up to its billing. As the title suggests it is a comprehensive review of the separation of enantiomers using capillary electrophoresis in sixteen chapters contributed by different research groups. Capillary electrophoresis is treated in its broadest sense to include free flow electrophoresis in capillary and microfluidic formats and nonaqueous media, as well as micellar electrokinetic chromatography, microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography, and capillary electrochromatography. Although not specifically associated with the separation of enantiomers preconcentration techniques using sample stacking and sweeping and techniques for coupling capillary electrophoresis with mass spectrometry are dealt with in a comprehensive manner. The focus of the book is on the
C. F. Poole (&) Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA e-mail: cfp@chem.wayne.edu
separation of drug substances in pharmaceutical products and body fluids and regulatory compliance of these methods. Coverage of other application areas, such as environmental systems, is sparse at best. The main chiral selectors, native and charged cyclodextrins, crown ethers (and other cryptands), macrocyclic antibiotics, proteins and peptides, and metal complexes are covered comprehensively and fully referenced. I appreciated that the bibliography for each chapter included the full tile of each paper, facilitating identifying specific information for named compounds as well as papers of a more general and mechanistic type. The book has a good plan and the authors have delivered on their assignments. With this one resource the reader can quickly obtain a current snapshot of the increasing use of capillary electrophoretic methods for the separation of the enantiomers of pharmaceutical compounds as well as the research that is currently underway to expand these methods. The high efficiency of capillary electrophoretic methods and the economic use of chiral selectors have made this a flexible and competitive technique to liquid chromatography. There is still a problem with the robustness of separation methods outside the dedicated professionals found in research laboratories and capillary electrophoretic methods are not easily scalable to preparative separations, as the relatively straightforward liquid and supercritical fluid chromatography. The prediction of separation conditions directly from structure using capillary electrophoresis is still largely an unattainable goal but the large number of separations of small molecules that have been achieved using a few selectors (particularly those based on the cyclodextrins) results in less hardship in method development than might be anticipated. Method development is facilitated by the high efficiency of capillary electrophoretic methods so that adequate separations can be obtained with very small differences in equilibrium constants. Thus, for the foreseeable future,
123
198
capillary electrophoresis is likely to remain a powerful technique for the analytical-scale separation of enantiomers. This book is a good resource for those coming to the
123
Colin F. Poole
technique for the first time or more experienced analysts looking for a comprehensive summary of the current state of the art.