Comparison of vancomycin-based stationary phases with different chiral selector coverage for enantioselective separation of selected drugs in high-performance liquid chromatography

Two vancomycin-based chiral stationary phases (CSPs) with different coverage of the chiral selector vancomycin (Chirobiotic V and Chirobiotic V2) were compared. β-Blockers and profens, as structurally diverse groups of drugs, were chosen as analytes. Retention and enantioseparation of β-blockers were studied in reversed-phase (RP) and polar-organic (PO) separation modes. Higher retention and better enantioresolution were obtained on the CSP with higher coverage of vancomycin in the both separation modes. Baseline separation of four β-blockers (eight enantiomers) in the PO mode was achieved on the Chirobiotic V2 column within 15 min. The enantioseparation of profens did not bring so excellent and easy to interpret results. Higher retention of profens on the Chirobiotic V2 column was not always accompanied by an improvement of their chiral separation in the RP mode. The polar-organic mode was not suitable for these derivatives at all. The most interesting result was obtained with flobufen; its chiral center is further away from the rigid part of the molecule, which mostly causes difficulties in enantioselective recognition. Nevertheless, the enantiomers of flobufen were shown to be much better (baseline) resolved on the CSP with lower coverage of the chiral selector (Chirobiotic V).