Cyclodextrin-Based Chiral Stationary Phases for Liquid Chromatography: A Twenty-Year Overview

Reversed-phase chiral stationary phases (CSPs) were important early on because pharmacokinetic and pharmocodynamic studies, which were done via reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), required a solvent-compatible CSP to separate chiral analytes and metabolites. The development of stable and effective reversed-phase CSPs eventually led to the US Food and Drug Administration’s 1992 guidelines regarding the development of chiral pharmaceutical products (1 ). One of the original and more versatile reversed-phase CSPs is based on cyclodextrins and their derivatives. It has been used to separate the enantiomers of over 1000 compounds, as well as numerous diastereomers, structural isomers, homologous compounds, and structurally unrelated compounds. Over 300 articles have been published in the literature on the use of cyclodextrin stationary phases, and countless analytical methods, which utilize these stationary phases, have been developed in academia and industry.