Page 118 - Chiral Separation Techniques

Chiral Separation Techniques: A Practical Approach, Second, completely revised and updated edition
Edited by G. Subramanian
Copyright © 2001 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH
ISBNs: 3-527-29875-4 (Hardcover); 3-527-60036-1 (Electronic)
4 CHIRBASE: Database Current Status and

Derived Research Applications using

Molecular Similarity, Decision Tree and
3D “Enantiophore” Search

Christian Roussel, Johanna Pierrot-Sanders, Ingolf Heitmann and
Patrick Piras

4.1 Introduction

The past two decades have seen remarkable advances in chiral chromatography, as
only 20 years ago, the direct resolution of enantiomers by chromatography was still
considered to be an impressive technical achievement.
The enormous increase in the number of groups working in this domain, in con-
cert with the advances in the fundamental techniques of chromatography and labo-
ratory automation (screening technologies) have led to the rapid and unprecedented
accumulation of data [1].
Despite the difficulties caused by the rapidly expanding literature, the use of chi-
ral stationary phases (CSPs) as the method of choice for analysis or preparation of
enantiomers is today well established and has become almost routine. It results from
the development of chiral chromatographic methods that more than 1000 chiral sta-
tionary phases exemplified by several thousands of enantiomer separations have
been described for high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).
The intended fields of usage of these methods include a broad range of R&D and
control applications (pharmacokinetics, asymmetric synthesis, enzymatic resolution,
simulated moving bed technology, etc.) in the pharmaceutical and agrochemical, as
well as the food and biotechnology industries. This gives rise to one important out-
come for the application of chiral technology: an increasing number of scientists
with different scientific cultures have to select the correct analytical tools.
If the end-users of these tools have different objectives and requirements depend-
ing on the field of their activity, they do have in common the same issue: which CSP
and working conditions should be selected for the enantiomeric separation of a given
pair of enantiomers?
Such an achievement of a chiral separation often requires large numbers of expen-
sive and time-consuming laboratory experiments, even for experienced groups and
organizations. Without considering the resulting loss of time and money for those
who repeat negative experiments already mentioned in the literature, substantial
savings in resources can be expected by strategies in which a substance’s behavior
on a given CSP can be evaluated from a database search of its molecular structure.