An alternative procedure to screen mixture combinatorial libraries for selectors for chiral chromatography.

An alternative process for the analysis of mixture library components for their potential as selectors for chiral chromatography is described. The procedure involves the immobilization of each enantiomer of the target racemic analyte to silica gel, followed by incubation of each resulting stationary phase with a mixture library. The adsorbed library components on the two stationary phases are then analyzed by reversed-phase liquid chromatography. A comparison of the resulting two chromatograms is made. Any peak of identical retention time but with a significant difference in intensity in the two chromatograms indicates that this component is most likely a chiral selector. Its chemical structure is then determined by LC-MS or LC-MS-MS. This new screening method significantly increases the efficiency of chiral selector determination by eliminating the need for multilibrary syntheses, as opposed to our previous method. This technique should also allow for the screening of much larger libraries as compared to our previous work.