Breakthrough in Drug Discvovery Revealed

The success of using a new technique in chiral chromatography and intentions for commercial availability were presented by Professor Gasparrini of Sapienza Universita di Roma during Pittcon’s Technical Programme. The talk, "On the use of the sub-2μm Whelk-O1 stationary phase in enantioselective ultra-high performance SFC" focused on a sub 2 micron particle size to explore the potential of ultra-fast chiral chromatography for high-throughput analysis. The fast method can be developed with minimum changes of experimental conditions and can be transferred for further optimization for selected racemic candidates.

This small particle size has gained popularity for conventional chromatographic analyses for delivering faster and better performance on UHPLC equipment. Now the same advantage will be available for screening and method development for chiral separations.

Chirality has become vitally important in the pharmaceutical, chemical, and agricultural industries. The differences that make compounds chiral can produce critically different pharmacological effects in biological systems. Thus, choosing the correct enantiomer of a chiral compound is critical in drug development.

In addition to the ultra-fast separations to be expected, coupled with new technologies, the chiral stationary phase (CSP) performs well for separation of additional classes of compounds that were previously not good candidates for separation on this chiral selector, which opens the door for exploring improved selectivity on the Whelk-O® 1 CSP.

Professor Gasparrini’s work on sub 2 micron Whelk-O® 1 CSP has been published in numerous publications and presented in the most prestigious industry-related events. Regis Technologies is proud to support Gasparrini's work and contributed to the technical session at this year's Pittcon Conference & Expo.

The talk was a special addition to the “Supercritical CO2-SFE/SFC: Advances in Extraction and Purification for Pharmaceutical and Natural Products” session.