Strategy for large-scale isolation of enantiomers in drug discovery.

A strategy for large-scale chiral resolution is illustrated by the isolation of pure enantiomer from a 5kg batch. Results from supercritical fluid chromatography will be presented and compared with normal phase liquid chromatography. Solubility of the compound in the supercritical mobile phase was shown to be the limiting factor. To circumvent this, extraction injection was used but shown not to be efficient for this compound. Finally, a method for chiral resolution by crystallization was developed and applied to give diastereomeric salt with an enantiomeric excess of 99% at a 91% yield. Direct access to a diverse separation tool box will be shown to be essential for solving separation problems in the most cost and time efficient way.

A closer study of methanol adsorption and its impact on solute retentions in supercritical fluid chromatography.

Surface excess adsorption isotherms of methanol on a diol silica adsorbent were measured in supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) using a mixture of methanol and carbon dioxide as mobile phase. The tracer pulse method was used with deuterium labeled methanol as solute and the tracer peaks were detected using APCI-MS over the whole composition range from neat carbon dioxide to neat methanol. The results indicate that a monolayer (4Å) of methanol is formed on the stationary phase. Moreover, the importance of using the set or the actual methanol fractions and volumetric flows in SFC was investigated by measuring the mass flow respective pressure and by calculations of the actual volume fraction of methanol. The result revealed a significant difference between the value set and the actually delivered volumetric methanol flow rate, especially at low modifier fractions. If relying only on the set methanol fraction in the calculations, the methanol layer thickness should in this system be highly overestimated. Finally, retention times for a set of solutes were measured and related to the findings summarized above concerning methanol adsorption. A strongly non-linear relationship between the logarithms of the retention factors and the modifier fraction in the mobile phase was revealed, prior to the established monolayer. At modifier fractions above that required for establishment of the methanol monolayer, this relationship turns linear which explains why the solute retention factors are less sensitive to changes in modifier content in this region.

Evaluation of scale-up from analytical to preparative supercritical fluid chromatography.

An approach for reliable transfer from analytical to preparative scale supercritical fluid chromatography was evaluated. Here, we accounted for the conditions inside the columns as well as to the fact that most analytical instruments are volume-controlled while most preparative scale units are mass-controlled. The latter is a particular problem when performing pilot scale experiments and optimizations prior to scaling up to production scale. This was solved by measuring the mass flow, the pressure and the temperature on the analytical unit using external sensors. Thereafter, it was revealed with a design of experiments approach that the methanol fraction and the pressure are the two most important parameters to control for preserved retention throughout the scale-up; for preserved selectivity the temperature was most important in this particular system. Using this approach, the resulting chromatograms from the preparative unit agreed well with those from the analytical unit while keeping the same column length and particles size. A brief investigation on how the solute elution volume varies with the volumetric flow rate revealed a complex dependency on pressure, density and apparent methanol content. Since the methanol content is a parameter of great importance to control during the scale up, we must be careful when changing operational and column design conditions which generates deviations in pressure, density and methanol content between different columns.

Evaluation of the chiral recognition properties as well as the column performance of four chiral stationary phases based on cellulose (3,5-dimethylphenylcarbamate) by parallel HPLC and SFC.

The performance of four commercially available cellulose tris(3,5-dimethylphenylcarbamate) based chiral stationary phases (CSPs) was evaluated with parallel high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and super critical fluid chromatography (SFC). Retention, enantioselectivity, resolution and efficiency were compared for a set of neutral, basic and acidic compounds having different physico-chemical properties by using different mobile phase conditions. Although the chiral selector is the same in all the four CSPs, a large difference in the ability to retain and resolve enantiomers was observed under the same chromatographic conditions. We believe that this is mainly due to differences in the silica matrix and immobilization techniques used by the different vendors. An extended study of metoprolol and structure analogues gave a deeper understanding of the accessibility of the chiral discriminating interactions and its impact on the resolution of the racemic compounds on the four CSPs studied. Also, a clear difference in enantioselectivity is observed between SFC and LC mode, hydrogen bonding was found to play an important role in the differential binding of the enantiomers to the CSPs.

Preparative chiral chromatography and chiroptical characterization of enantiomers of omeprazole and related benzimidazoles.

To chiroptically characterize the enantiomers of omeprazole and some structurally related benzimidazoles with circular dichroism (CD), preparative chiral liquid chromatography was utilized for the isolation of the pure enantiomers. A limited analytical column screen was performed identifying Kromasil-CHI-TBB and the amylose-based phases Chiralpak AD and AS as possible chiral stationary phases (CSPs) for the preparative scale separation of the enantiomers of the different benzimidazoles. Optimization of the chromatographic conditions with respect to retention, enantioseparation, and resolution was achieved by variation of the mobile phase constituents as well as of temperature. Because of the lability of the compound in slightly acidic media, supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) could not be applied for a preparative scale separation of the enantiomers. The separation of omeprazole was optimized to give high throughput (2.6 kg racemate/kg CSP/day) and high enantiomeric excess of the obtained isomers. The absolute configurations of the pure enantiomers of rabeprazole, lansoprazole, and pantoprazole were determined from the strong correlation to the CD spectrum of (+)-(R)-omeprazole. For all the compounds, the (+)-enantiomers displayed similar chiroptical features as (+)-(R)-omeprazole and were thus assigned the (R)- configuration. Elution order of the optical isomers was monitored by injecting racemic solutions spiked with one of the isomers and also by an on-line laser polarimeter. Both the type of CSP and also the mobile phase constituents had a strong effect on elution order of the enantiomers.

Effect of temperature on the reversal in the retention order of the enantiomers of mosapride on Chiral-AGP.

The retention order of the enantiomers of mosapride could be controlled by column temperature and mobile phase pH. In the presented paper, temperature studies have been used to study the thermodynamics of the reversal in retention order. A linear relationship was obtained plotting the logarithm of the capacity factor versus the inverted column temperature. However, at higher mobile phase pHs, the logarithm of the separation factor versus the inverted column temperature showed a non-linear behaviour and at the highest mobile phase pH used (pH=7.4), an optimum in the separation factor was observed. The plots showed that the thermodynamics for the two enantiomers of mosapride differ in the studied mobile phase pH interval. Thermodynamic values, enthalpy and entropy were calculated and showed that at a low mobile phase pH, the enantiomeric resolution was caused by differences in enthalpy between the two enantiomers. However, at a higher mobile phase pH, the chiral discrimination was a result of entropy effects. High correlation was obtained between experimental and predicted separation factors at different mobile phase pHs.