CAPILLARY ELECTROPHORESIS IN CHEMICAL PHARMACEUTICAL QUALITY-CONTROL

Pharmaceutical research is developing increasingly complex molecules and drug formulations, and each novel, highly efficient and highly selective analytical technique is therefore of much potential interest. The use of capillary electrophoresis (CE) as an additional analytical tool in chemical and pharmaceutical quality control is discussed and compared with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Applications are shown for the separation of very similar molecules, the determination of drug-related impurities at levels of ca. 0.1%, the determination of drug content in pharmaceutical formulations, as well as the possibilities for chiral analysis. CE should not be considered as a substitute, but rather as a complementary method to HPLC. Besides its large separatory capacity and simplicity, the main advantage of CE is that it is highly economical.