Chapter 16 Pharmaceuticals

Abstract

Publisher Summary The chapter discusses recent salient advances in the gas chromatography (GC), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS), of a spectrum of important classes of pharmaceuticals with a secondary emphasis on thin layer chromatography (TLC) and drugs of abuse and abused drugs. Compared to the other classes of utility and agents (e.g., industrial chemicals, pesticides) pharmaceuticals represent an area where a variety of chromatographic techniques have been most widely employed and continued advances made, primarily in the utility of HPLC and GC–MS. Chromatography (GC, GC–MS, HPLC, and TLC) is widely employed (1) for the assessment of product purity, homogeneity, and stability; (2) in the analysis of biological fluids and tissues for the assessment of proper dosage, metabolic fate, and pharmacokinetics; and (3) in toxicological and forensic applications. HPLC is ideally suited to monitoring drug preparations for quality and purity, particularly compounds that are difficult to analyze by gas–liquid chromatography (GLC) because of their thermal instability or poor volatility. In fact, HPLC methods are used more frequently than GLC methods in the quality control sections of most pharmaceutical firms.