QUANTITATIVE ASPECTS OF THE APPLICATION OF CAPILLARY ELECTROPHORESIS TO THE ANALYSIS OF PHARMACEUTICALS AND DRUG-RELATED IMPURITIES

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is a collection of associated electrokinetic techniques, the principal ones being free solution capillary electrophoresis (FSCE) and micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography (MECC). Both FSCE and MECC have been utilised for the separation of drug species. Several reports have demonstrated that CE is an attractive complement or alternative to HPLC which is widely used for pharmaceutical analyses. CE methods have been validated and are now in routine use within a number of pharmaceutical companies. This review details both applications taken from within a working pharmaceutical analysis laboratory and also provides selected literature examples. Applications include the quantitative analysis of drug related impurities, determinations of drug content in formulations, chiral analysis, stoichiometric determinations, and micro-preparative CE.