HPLC for Pharmaceutical Scientists 2007 (Part 22)

Chirality plays a major role in biological processes, and the enantiomers of a bioactive molecule often possess different biological effects. For example, all pharmacological activity may reside in one enantiomer of a molecule, or enantiomers may have identical qualitative and quantitative pharmacological activity. In some cases, enantiomers may have qualitatively similar pharmacological activity, but different quantitative potencies. Since drugs that are produced by chemical synthesis are usually a mixture of enantiomers, there is a need to quantify the level of the isomeric impurity in the active pharmaceutical ingredient. ...