Simultaneous determination of optical and chemical purities of a drug with two chiral centers by liquid chromatography-circular dichroism detection on a non-chiral stationary phase

The need for a rapid and cheap chromatographic technique for the simultaneous determination of diastereoisomeric and chemical purities of a drug has led to develop a non-enantioselective HPLC method on a porous graphitic carbon (PGC) sorbent and by using circular dichroism (CD) detection. Among a lot of non-chiral chromatographic supports tested, PGC was the only one allowing the separation of all benzoxathiepin diastereoisomers. After optimization of the chromatographic conditions, a mobile phase composed of chloroform, acetonitrile and methanol was suitable to elute the diastereoisomers with their related chemical impurities in less than 20 min by gradient mode. CD detection was found to be compatible with elution gradient and both the UV, CD and g anisotropy factor signals were recorded without disturbance. The determination of chemical purity was achieved with UV detection (254 nm) whereas the diastereoisomeric purity was determined using CD detection (258 nm) by plotting the anisotropy factors (R,S–S,R and R,R–S,S) versus the enantiomeric excess of each couple of enantiomers. A mathematic model was developed in order to express the diastereoisomeric excess versus the enantiomeric excess of each couple of enantiomers. Hence, the HPLC-UV/CD method was convenient to give access simultaneously to the optical and chemical purities of a chiral drug.