High-throughput evaluation of lipophilicity and acidity by new gradient HPLC methods

There is a need for fast testing of drug candidates for properties of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics importance, in particular lipophilicity and acidity. These two parameters can conveniently be estimated by gradient reversed-phase HPLC. Appropriate conventional organic solvent gradient and the new pH gradient HPLC procedures are presented. The chromatographic parameter of lipophilicity, log kw, can be determined from two organic solvent gradient runs instead of 6-8 runs necessary in the standard isocratic (polycratic) approach. The newly introduced pH gradient reversed-phase HPLC consists in a programmed increase during the chromatographic run of the eluting power of the mobile phase with regards to ionizable analytes. The eluting strength of the mobile phase increases due to its increasing (in case of acidic analytes) or decreasing (basic analytes) pH, whereas the content of organic modifier remains constant. It has been theoretically and experimentally demonstrated that the pKa and log kw values can be evaluated based on retention data from a pH gradient run, combined with appropriate data from two organic solvent gradient runs. The gradient HPLC-derived log kw parameters correlate well with analogous parameters determined isocratically as well as with reference lipophilicity parameter log P (logarithm of n-octanol/water partition coefficient). Also, the HPLC-derived pKa parameters correlate to the literature pKa values (w(w)pKa), conventionally determined by titrations in water. The approach described allows rapid and high-throughput assessment of log kw and pKa for large series of drugs candidates, also when the analytes are available in a form of mixture, e.g. produced by combinatorial synthesis.