Enantiospecific analysis has an important role in drug metabolism and pharmacokinetic investigations and its now no longer acceptable to determine total drug, or metabolite, concentrations following the administration of a racemate. Inspite of the fact that capillary electrophoresis (CE) has become an essential technique in pharmaceutical and enantiospecific analysis, the chromatographic methodologies remain the most commonly used approach for the determination of the enantiomeric composition of drugs in biological fluids. The application of CE to bioanalysis has been slow, which is in part associated with the complexity of biological matrices together with the relatively poor concentration limits of detection achievable. However, as a result of its versatility, high separation efficiency, minimal sample requirements, speed of analysis and low consumable expense CE is likely to play an increasingly significant role in the area. This review present an overview of enantiospecific CE in bioanalysis in which the approaches to enantiomeric resolution and the problems associated with biological matrices are briefly discussed. The application of enantiospecific CE to samples of biological origin is illustrated using examples where the methodology has either solved an analytical problem, or provided a useful alternative to the currently available chromatographic methods. Such improvements in methodology are associated with either the high separation efficiency and/or microanalytical capabilities of the technique. Enantiospecific CE will not replace the chromatographic methodologies but does provide the bioanalyst with a useful addition to his armamentarium.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.