Thomas E. Beesley

The development of chiral column technology since the review in 2008 is discussed by Thomas Beesley.

An ever-increasing need for chiral separations has led to a more generic approach for screening a variety of chiral stationary phases. These new screening methodologies have been supported by new instrument development, new chiral product performance, and a new level of user knowledge. Supercritical fluid chromatography has continued to grow, supported by published applications from the separations industry. An expanded field of polysaccharide phases has been made available from a variety of sources with some unique variants of the most common cellulose and amylose derivatives.

Chiral separations remain high on the priority list of drug developers. Liquid chromatography and supercritical fluid chromatography continue to vie for dominance in the chiral separation market but might be reaching the state of complementary methodologies. New separation technologies and new advances in current products continue to elevate the state of the art of chiral separations. Automation in both screening for chiral selectivity and preparative purifications has helped make significant gains in productivity in this area.

Given the increasing number of chiral samples and the time constraints under which chromatographers work, choosing an appropriate chiral stationary phase for the resolution of enantiomers can be challenging. In this article, the authors describe a screening approach for chiral HPLC method development.