CURRENT CHALLENGES IN ANALYSIS OF PHARMACEUTICALS WITH THE EMPHASES ON CHIRAL DRUGSECENT RESULTS IN THE INVESTIGATION OF BIOACTIVE PHENOLICS FROM MEDICINAL AND FOOD PLANTS

Abstract

Compounds of pharmaceutical interest are analysed for various purposes. Among them are analytical methods required for drug development, for studies of its quality, for controlling its adequate use, as well as its proper disposal and its environmental impact. Each of these areas have further branches that make pharmaceutical analysis a huge field of research, as well as of scientific and applied impact. The multiplicity of goals related to the analysis of pharmaceuticals leads to the wide variability of matrices these compounds have to be determined in, as well as requires the application of various analytical techniques and detection schemes. This is very challenging and commonly strongly regulated field of mankind´s activity requiring good knowledge and (laboratory) infrastructure.

Currently, the tendency in pharmaceutical industry is shifting from small synthetic molecules to large biopharmaceuticals. This also affects analytical strategies used on the stage of drug development, as well as on the stage of their use. The natural product analysis is also a challenging and rapidly developing area. This presentation shortly summarizes general challenges and trends in the analysis of pharmaceuticals and based on the author´s research experience focusses more on separation of enantiomers of chiral drugs and their enantioselective analysis. In this part, separation methods such as high-performance liquid chromatography [1], capillary electrophoresis [2] and capillary electrochromatography [3] will be shortly overviewed and advantages and disadvantages of these techniques will be highlighted.