Alternative method for determination of contaminated heparin using chiral recognition

Since 2008 a significant amount of work has focused on the development of methods to analyze contaminated heparin. This work focuses on utilizing heparin's ability to serve as a chiral selector as a means for determining contamination. Specifically, the effect of contamination on the separation of pheniramine and chloroquine enantiomers was explored. Separations were conducted using heparin contaminated with chondroitin sulfate at varying levels. For each pair of enantiomers, electrophoretic mobility and resolution were calculated. For pheniramine enantiomers, an increase in contamination leads to a decrease in the electrophoretic mobility and resolution. A linear relationship between contamination level and electrophoretic mobility of the pheniramine enantiomers was observed for the entire contamination range. A linear relationship was also found between contamination level and resolution of the enantiomers between 0 and 70 percent contamination. For the separation of chloroquine enantiomers, it was found that at low levels of contamination, the resolution of enantiomers was increased due to the secondary interaction between the chloroquine enantiomers and the chondroitin sulfate. Results of this study illustrate the potential of using chiral recognition as a means to determine heparin contamination as well as the improvement of the chiral resolution of chloroquine with the additional of low levels of chondroitin sulfate A.