Enantioseparation in CE using macrocyclic antibiotics as chiral selectors

Enantiomer separation represents an important topic especially in pharmaceutical and environmental fields where many drugs and pesticides are racemic compounds. In some cases, only one of the enantiomers has pharmacological or pesticidal activity while the other may exhibit antagonistic activities, unwanted side effects or even toxic effects. Therefore, the development of new enantioseparation methods with high efficiency and sensitivity is of great interest for monitoring the stereoselective synthesis of enantiomers, pharmacological studies, enantiomeric purity control, environmental investigations, etc. Capillary electrophoresis (CE) has proven to be an effective technique for chiral separation. As a complementary method to chromatographic techniques such as gas chromatography, liquid chromatography and more recently supercritical fluid chromatography. CE has some general merits including impressive peak efficiency, flexibility regarding choice of the chiral selectors and operating conditions, environmental friendliness, minimum consumption of reagents and samples, fast analysis with low cost, etc.