Objective: The purpose of this study was to separate the enantiomers of amlodipine by High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) using ovomucoid (OVM) as chiral selector, respectively by Capillary Electrophoresis (CE) using cyclodextrines and to evaluate the analytical performance of the both proposed methods.
Material and methods: HPLC enantioseparation of amlodipine was performed on an HPLC Agilent Technologies 1100 series using as chiral stationary phase an Ultron ES OVM, 150×4.6 mm column with ovomucoid as chiral selector. The stereoselective CE analysis of amlodipine was achieved on Agilent Technologies 7100 CE using uncoated fused-silica capillaries 48 cm x 50 mm and different type of cyclodextrins as chiral selectors.
Results: A mobile phase consisting of 80% Na2HPO4 10 mM at a pH level of 5.0 and 20% ACN, isocratic elution at a flow of 1 ml/min turned to be the optimal experimental conditions for HPLC analysis (R=5.51; α=1.71) with retention times shorter than 10 minutes for the two isomers, tR (S-AML) = 4.63 (min); tR (R-AML) = 5.54 (min). The migration times for amlodipine enantiomers were tm (S-AML) = 8.15 (min) and tm (R-AML)= 8.45 (min) and the optimum CE conditions have proven to be a buffer solution containing 25 mM H3PO4 at pH 3.0 and 20 mM α-CD as chiral selector and a capillary temperature set at 15°C (R=1.51; α=1.03).
Conclusion: The analytical performances of the chromatographic method using OVM as chiral selector are superior to the electrophoretic analysis method but the CE method is more economical and may represent an alternative to the HPLC chromatographic separation.