Chiral Drug Analysis in Forensic Chemistry: An Overview

Abstract

Many substances of forensic interest are chiral and available either as racemates or pure enantiomers. Application of chiral analysis in biological samples can be useful for the determination of legal or illicit drugs consumption or interpretation of unexpected toxicological effects. Chiral substances can also be found in environmental samples and revealed to be useful for determination of community drug usage (sewage epidemiology), identification of illicit drug manufacturing locations, illegal discharge of sewage and in environmental risk assessment. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the application of chiral analysis in biological and environmental samples and their relevance in the forensic field. Most frequently analytical methods used to quantify the enantiomers are liquid and gas chromatography using both indirect, with enantiomerically pure derivatizing reagents, and direct methods recurring to chiral stationary phases.

Enantioseparation of chiral pharmaceuticals by vancomycin‐bonded stationary phase and analysis of chiral recognition mechanism

“…1,2 Because of the identical physicochemical properties but different biological activities, metabolic pathways, and toxicities of chiral enantiomers, the chiral separation has been a great challenge and still remains a hot issue, which has attracted attention of agricultural, pharmaceutical, and environmental communities. [2][3][4] Of the enantioseparation techniques, a highperformance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with chiral stationary phases (CSPs) has been recognized to be the most predominant method for chiral separation. [5][6][7] Since the first introduction of macrocyclic antibiotics as chiral selector in 1994 by Armstrong et al, 8 the vancomycinbased CSPs have been widely applied for the separation of various chiral pharmaceuticals, pesticides and industrial materials with liquid chromatography (LC) in different modes.…”

Enantioseparation of ketoconazole and miconazole by capillary electrophoresis and a study on their inclusion interactions with β‐cyclodextrin and derivatives

“…Although these drugs have similar physical and chemical properties, as well as configuration number, R and S enantiomers differ in their biological properties, such as pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and levels of toxicity. 1 In this context, chiral separation plays important role especially in the agrochemical and pharmaceutical fields because most of the molecules are reported to be chiral compounds. 2 In order to monitor the stereoselective processes of these chiral compounds, analytical methods for the separation of enantiomers that possess good efficiency, reproducibility and resolution are required.…”

Enantioseparation and Determination of Mephedrone and Its Metabolites by Capillary Electrophoresis Using Cyclodextrins as Chiral Selectors

“…In general, the GC-MS technique is used more for drug analysis, mainly due to shorter elution times [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ]. Chiral separation is most often performed in an achiral environment after the previous conversion of enantiomers to diastereoisomers [ 20 ], which, however, brings complications for the quantification itself [ 21 ]. It should be also noted that cathinones are thermodegradable substances and due to the thermal conditions necessary for separation by GC, their partial decomposition occurs [ 5 ].…”