Ultrafast separation of fluorinated and desfluorinated pharmaceuticals using highly efficient and selective chiral selectors bonded to superficially porous particles

The separation of fluorinated active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) from their desfluoro analogs is a challenging analytical task due to their structural similarity. In this work, fluorine containing APIs and their corresponding desfluorinated impurities were separated on five new 2.7 μm superficially porous particles (SPPs) functionalized with bonded chiral selectors. The unique shape selectivity of bonded macrocyclic glycopeptides and oligosaccharides was utilized to separate seven pairs of fluoro/desfluoro APIs resulting in some unprecedented selectivity values. For example, SPP bonded isopropyl cyclofructan 6 yielded a selectivity of 2.73 for voriconazole and desfluoro voriconazole. Further, the SPP based columns allowed for rapid separations ranging from 9 to 55 s with very high efficiencies ranging from 45,000 to 70,000 plates/m (at high flow rates) in both reversed phase and polar organic modes. Chromatographic separation and detection by HPLC-ESI-MS was demonstrated using ezetimibe and voriconazole and their desfluorinated impurities. Among the tested phases, SPP hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin separated the most fluorinated and desfluorinated analogs with baseline resolution.