Abstract

Prominence of chirality of drugs has been increasingly recognized, and the consequence of using them as racemates or as enantiomers has been frequently discussed in pharmaceutical literature during recent years. This awareness on issues pertinent to chirality in drug design and drug development had increased chiral explorations. This in turn had augmented the need for good chiral analytical tools. Consequently, now a spectrum of enantiospecific analytical methodologies such as physical (includes optical rotation, circular dichroism, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy, and powder X-ray diffraction), biological (viz. enantiospecific immunoassay and radioreceptor assay) and separation science methods(includes gas chromatography, supercritical fluid chromatography, high performance liquid chromatography and capillary electrophoresis) are available for chiral examination of drugs. In this context, the present article provides a gist of various options available for chiral analysis and examines in detail the direct chiral high performance liquid chromatographic technique, with reference to application in enantiospecific drug analysis.