Separation of Periodate, Iodate and Iodide on a C-18 Stationary Phase. Dependence of the Retention on the Temperature and Solvent Composition. Monitoring of an Oxidative Cleavage Reaction

The separation of periodate, iodate and iodide can be easily achieved by HPLC on a C-18 column with a mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile and aqueous phosphoric acid, without the need of any mobile phase additives that are often employed. All three iodine species are well separated. Separation factors as high as 16 are observed, and retention factors k between ～0.5 and 8. The retention time of all three ions increases with increasing acetonitrile concentration. The retention time of periodate and iodide decreases with increasing temperature, however, it increases slightly for iodate. An application of the HPLC method that was developed is the monitoring of an oxidative cleavage reaction, the cleavage of the enone-group of the steroid 4-androstene-3,17-dione. Periodate is used as oxidative reagent for this reaction. During the reaction periodate is reduced to iodate, and eventually both iodine species will be present in the reaction mixture, besides the starting material and product. In the final product the remaining iodate ions will be reduced to iodide which can be quantified accurately using the developed HPLC method.     

Development of a gradient elution preparative high performance liquid chromatography method for the recovery of the antibiotic ertapenem from crystallization process streams

A gradient elution preparative chromatography method was developed for the recovery of the antibiotic ertapenem from crystallization mother-liquor streams. The preparative HPLC method that was developed on the lab-scale employs an analytical size column of conventional dimensions (25 cm x 0.46 cm) packed with Kromasil C8 stationary phase. Gradient elution was used with aqueous acetic acid and acetonitrile as mobile phases. A target of processing approximately 30 mg of ertapenem per half an hour at a flow rate of 1.5 mL/min with high yield and adequate rejection of all major impurities was achieved. This corresponds to a productivity of approximately 0.6 kg ertapenem as free acid per kilogram of stationary phase per day (kkd). The scalability of the method was demonstrated by using a 5 cm i.d. column configuration to generate 10 g of purified ertapenem. This work complements a previous study improving on the productivity and throughput of the method by employing gradient elution and the use of crystallization to remove some key impurities that are chromatographically difficult to resolve [A. Vailaya, P. Sajonz, O. Sudah, V. Capodanno, R. Helmy, F.D. Antia, J. Chromatogr. A 1079 (2005) 80].     

Influence of the column hold-up time measurement accuracy on the prediction of chromatographic band profiles

The influence of the column hold-up time measurement accuracy on the determination of equilibrium isotherms by classical frontal analysis and the prediction of overloaded elution band profiles were investigated. The ideal model of chromatography in combination with a Langmuir isotherm was used. Breakthrough curves and overloaded elution profiles were computer generated with a known hold-up time value (true hold-up time). Then these data were evaluated the same way as it is done with experimental chromatographic data where the true hold-up time is unknown, i.e. to determine the equilibrium isotherm by the frontal analysis procedure, to fit the isotherm data to the Langmuir model and then to predict chromatographic band profiles using, e.g. the ideal model of chromatography. A comparison of overloaded elution profiles obtained with different deviations of the hold-up time from its true value shows that the effect of its measurement error is significant in preparative liquid chromatography because the isotherm is usually strongly nonlinear in this case.     

Looking Beyond the Column: An Investigation into Method Irreproducibility for an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient

Irreproducibility during initial development of a high performance liquid chromatography method is seldom investigated in a thorough and careful manner when working in an industrial setting. For a drug project in the early developmental stages, the LC method is often changed, sometimes drastically, if one encounters irreproducibility in the method. Too often a method is deemed irreproducible due to column lot variability, diluent effects, or pH effects with little or no experiments taking place for justification and little thought given to why the irreproducibility may have occurred in the first case. In this paper, a case study is presented in which a systematic approach was carried out in order to determine the exact reason why method irreproducibility was occurring. The findings of the investigation were then drawn onto change a method with poor reproducibility into one that is rugged without the need to start from the beginning and develop a new method.

     

Exploiting pH mismatch in preparative high-performance liquid chromatographic recovery of ertapenem from mother liquor streams

Preparative chromatography was successfully employed to recover ertapenem from mother liquor streams. The recovery process involved concentration of mother liquor stream by evaporation, purification by reversed-phase preparative high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and removal of chromatographic solvents in the recovered fractions by evaporation. HPLC feed was prepared by stripping off the organic solvents from the mother liquor using a wiped-film evaporator. Purification was first carried out on a 25 cm x 0.46 cm analytical column packed with 10-microm Kromasil C8 particles and then scaled up to a 25 cm x 5 cm preparative column. Gram-level recovery of ertapenem with high purity was achieved by exploiting a novel approach based on pH mismatch between the feed and the eluent. Purified ertapenem streams from preparative HPLC runs were combined, evaporated and recycled into the crystallizer for ertapenem isolation.     

Looking Beyond the Column: An Investigation into Method Irreproducibility for an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient

Irreproducibility during initial development of a high performance liquid chromatography method is seldom investigated in a thorough and careful manner when working in an industrial setting. For a drug project in the early developmental stages, the LC method is often changed, sometimes drastically, if one encounters irreproducibility in the method. Too often a method is deemed irreproducible due to column lot variability, diluent effects, or pH effects with little or no experiments taking place for justification and little thought given to why the irreproducibility may have occurred in the first case. In this paper, a case study is presented in which a systematic approach was carried out in order to determine the exact reason why method irreproducibility was occurring. The findings of the investigation were then drawn onto change a method with poor reproducibility into one that is rugged without the need to start from the beginning and develop a new method.     

Impact of an error in the column hold-up time for correct adsorption isotherm determination in chromatography I. Even a small error can lead to a misunderstanding of the retention mechanism

The impact of a realistic error in the column hold-up time on the determination of the adsorption isotherm model was systematically investigated. Frontal analysis and the inverse method were used for the accurate determination of the adsorption isotherm. The true retention times of the breakthrough curves were used with a known hold-up time as reference. The adsorption isotherms were calculated using the same procedure that is used for real experimental adsorption isotherms, where the true hold-up time is unknown. The raw data were analyzed with calculations of adsorption energy distributions (AEDs), Scatchard plots, fitting to different rival adsorption models and finally their ability to predict true profiles. The results show that for a true Langmuir and bi-Langmuir model with an underestimated hold-up time the error may lead to a more heterogeneous model and for overestimated cases false adsorption processes like multi-layer adsorption or solute-solute interaction are assumed. The Scatchard plots for data obtained using a Langmuir adsorption isotherm are nonlinear and the AEDs show clear deviations from Langmuir behavior already at small deviations from the true hold-up time at a moderate surface coverage. The inverse method confirms the result that was obtained from the frontal analysis procedure.     

Study of the thermodynamics and mass transfer kinetics of two enantiomers on a polymeric imprinted stationary phase

The adsorption isotherms of

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- and

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-phenylalanine anilide (PA) on an

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-phenylalanine anilide imprinted stationary phase have been determined using staircase frontal analysis. An aqueous buffer–organic solvent mixture has been used as mobile phase. The measurements were done at temperatures of 40, 50, 60 and 70°C for sample concentrations ranging between 5·10⁻⁴ to 1 g/l. It was found that the adsorption data fit well to both the Freundlich and the Bi-Langmuir isotherm models. Examination of the best values of the numerical coefficients of the Bi-Langmuir model shows that the site class representing the binding sites with the highest binding energy exhibits a very low saturation capacity for the non-imprinted enantiomer, indicating a high selectivity for the imprinted

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-enantiomer. The low energy site class also shows some selectivity for the

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-enantiomer. Mass transfer rate coefficients were obtained for each single breakthrough curve by using the transport model of chromatography. It was found that the mass transfer coefficient of

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-PA increases very rapidly with the sample concentration while there is only a slight increase for the other enantiomer.     

Challenges in the analytical method development and validation for an unstable active pharmaceutical ingredient

A sensitive high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) impurity profile method for the antibiotic ertapenem is developed and subsequently validated. The method utilizes an Inertsil phenyl column at ambient temperature, gradient elution with aqueous sodium phosphate buffer at pH 8, and acetonitrile as the mobile phase. The linearity, method precision, method ruggedness, limit of quantitation, and limit of detection of the impurity profile HPLC method are found to be satisfactory. The method is determined to be specific, as judged by resolving ertapenem from in-process impurities in crude samples and degradation products that arise from solid state thermal and light stress, acid, base, and oxidative stressed solutions. In addition, evidence is obtained by photodiode array detection studies that no degradate or impurity having a different UV spectrum coeluted with the major component in stressed or unstressed samples. The challenges during the development and validation of the method are discussed. The difficulties of analyzing an unstable active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) are addressed. Several major impurities/degradates of the API have very different UV response factors from the API. These impurities/degradates are synthesized or prepared by controlled degradation and the relative response factors are determined.     

Optimization of the preparative separation of a chiral pharmaceutical intermediate by high performance liquid chromatography

The prediction of optimal conditions of the preparative HPLC separation of the enantiomers of a pharmaceutical intermediate was accomplished by employing analytical chromatographic data, i.e. sample injections at low concentrations. Various temperatures and mobile phase conditions were studied. It was assumed that the sample loadability of the stationary phase is constant for a constant value of the separation factor and different mobile phase conditions and temperatures. Using this assumption, possible production rates can be compared for different method conditions. Overloading experiments were carried out to verify that the procedure employed is adequate. It was found that the optimization approach used, changing the mobile phase composition and temperature to achieve the shortest cycle time while keeping the separation factor constant, could be applied to improve the production rate of the separation.