Biomedical Applications of Capillary Electrophoresis

Biomedicine is one of the most rapidly evolving fields in medicine with a strong focus on diagnostics. Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is a separation technique widely used for determining concentrations of biologically active compounds, pharmaceuticals, microorganisms, and their metabolites in biological fluids. Today, CE is widely employed in the diagnosis of various diseases. Additionally, it has become an important tool in the pharmaceutical industry, especially for assessing the enantiopurity of drugs. The main advantages of CE include an ability of the automation and miniaturization of an analysis, compatibility with mass-spectrometric detection, use of small sample volumes (nanoliters), and the availability of the equipment and consumables. This review summarizes the key areas of CE application to biomedicine, including proteomic and metabolomic studies, and examines its prospects for the ultra-miniaturization and automation of enantiomeric analysis, including the use of microelectronics and microfluidic systems.