Achiral and chiral separation and analysis of antifungal drugs by HPLC and CE: A comparative study: Mini review

The chromatographic and electrophoretic methods developed for the chiral and achiral analyses if antifungal agents are reviewed. The aim of this review is to compare different methodologies of analytical methods and to explore still the existing analytical problems. Last decade is characterized by dynamic development of instrumental methods that results in advance and diversity of applied analytical procedures. The enantiomeric separation of several compounds, including an antifungal drug and several of its precursors, using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and capillary electrophoresis (CE) is described in this work. The main focus was given to HPLC, the technique of choice in the analysis of most of the pharmaceutical formulations and biological samples. The columns used were based on polysaccharide derivatives. However, the results show that most of the separations obtained by CE are better, in terms of high resolution and short analysis time. The review discusses the chromatographic analysis of the following triazole antifungal drugs: fluconazole, itraconazole, and terconazole from the first generation and posaconazole, voriconazole, ravuconazole, isavuconazole, and albaconazole from the second generation in their pharmaceutical formulations and biological samples.