The purpose of this study was to develop a novel, simple and precise ligand-exchange capillary electrophoresis method to separate the diastereomer pairs of four major cinchona alkaloids (quinine/quinidine and cinchonine/cinchonidine). The l-lysine and copper(II) were chosen as the ligand and the central ion, respectively. Optimal separation conditions of four alkaloids were 4.0 mM l-lys, 2.0 mM copper(II) and 30 mM NH4Ac at pH 8.9 and a applied voltage of 15 kV . Meanwhile, the first-order derivative electropherogram was used for resolving the overlapping peaks of cinchonidine and quinidine. Under the optimum condition, good linearities were obtained with correlation coefficients from 0.9908 to 0.9935. The limits of detection (LOD, S/N = 3) and the limits of quantitation (LOQ, S/N = 10) ranged from 0.24 to 0.41 μg/mL and from 0.73 to 1.35 μg/mL, respectively. The recoveries ranged between 95.38 and 106.03%. The proposed ligand-exchange capillary electrophoresis method was suitable for the quantitative determination of four cinchona alkaloids in some preparations such as Compound Quinine Injection, Tonic Water and Klorane quinine and Vitamin B complex Shampoo.
