Facilitating Chiral Method Development Using UPSFC/MS

Chirality plays a critical role in drug profiles because enantiomers can have vastly different biological/pharmacological/toxicological properties. Chiral analysis is typically addressed in the early stage of drug discovery. Due to its superior resolving power and high speed, SFC has gained a strong foothold in the chiral analysis arena. Furthermore, SFC eliminates the use of toxic solvents typically associated with normal phase LC chiral analysis, such as hexane and chloroform.

The use of MS detection was demonstrated to facilitate chiral UPSFC method development. Taking advantage of the specificity of MS detection, a mixture of two enantiomers with different molecular masses was screened simultaneously. By examining the XICs combined with a prior knowledge of the compound mass, the compound identity was easily determined. The throughput for chiral method development was, therefore, improved two-fold, compared to a traditional SFC-UV approach. The ACQUITY UPSFC/MS System is ideal for laboratories pursuing high throughput enantioselective analyses, enantiomeric excess determination in a complex mixture or matrix, and impurity profiling.