Recognition of Artifacts Occurring in TLC

Abstract

The increased production of drugs requires a concomitant assessment of drug purity. Chromatography in general, and thin layer chromatography in particular, play an important role in determination of the impurity profiles of drug candidates. However, in using chromatography to determine impurities, the chemist must be careful, since extraneous zones or spots do not always indicate impurities. They may instead be artifacts, produced in the chromatographic system. In this paper we present a phenomenon related to on-plate decomposition. MK0912 was chosen as a model compound. To overcome the on-plate degradation an inclusion compound was formed with γ-cyclodextrin in the spotting solution, followed by a mobile phase containing hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide as a micelle generator. This technique proved to be successful for preventing degradation during chromatography.