Abstract
Bile salts are naturally occurring chiral surfactants that are able to solubilize hydrophobic compounds. Because of this ability, bile salts were exploited as chiral selectors added to the background solution (BGS) in the chiral micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) of various small molecules. In this review, we aimed to examine the developments in research on chiral MEKC using bile salts as chiral selectors over the past 20 years. The review begins with a discussion of the aggregation of bile salts in chiral recognition and separation, followed by the use of single bile salts and bile salts with other chiral selectors (i.e., cyclodextrins, proteins and single-stranded DNA aptamers). Advanced techniques such as partial-filling MEKC, stacking and single-drop microextraction were considered. Potential applications to real samples, including enantiomeric impurity analysis, were also discussed.
Highlights
The importance of chiral separation as an analytical technique cannot be understated.The different biological activities or potencies of chiral chemicals such as pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals are well documented and give impetus to chiral separation
In the 44 papers that were analyzed in this review, bile salts, either as sole chiral selectors (CS) or with another CS or another surfactant aided in the separation of various analytes, such as amino acids, pesticides, pharmaceutical drugs and phytochemicals
Bile salts were implemented in real sample determinations in various matrices, such as food, biological and environmental samples, and pharmaceutical preparations
Summary
The importance of chiral separation as an analytical technique cannot be understated. The different biological activities or potencies of chiral chemicals such as pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals are well documented and give impetus to chiral separation. Various analytical separation techniques have been developed in the fields of liquid chromatography, gas chromatography and capillary electrophoresis (CE). CE, additives called chiral selectors (CS) are usually added into the separation media or background solution (BGS). CSs act as the pseudophase, which interacts selectively with the enantiomeric analytes. Various CSs have been developed and/or utilized in chiral CE separations, such as antibiotics, ionic liquids, ligand exchangers, oligonucleotide aptamers, sugars (e.g., cyclodextrins (CDs))
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