HPLC-SPE-NMR in pharmaceutical development: capabilities and applications

High-performance liquid chromatography-solid phase extraction-NMR spectroscopy (HPLC-SPE-NMR) has recently become commercially available and has been evaluated with regard to its applicability in a pharmaceutical environment. The addition of an automated SPE unit to an HPLC-NMR system for peak trapping results in an improved NMR signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) and also has other practical advantages. The trapping efficiency is shown to depend on compound polarity and is highest for compounds eluting late on reversed-phase HPLC systems. Multiple peak trapping further increases the S/N, again with the best results for less polar compounds. For polar compounds, multiple peak trapping resulted in no S/N gain as the amount of material retained on the SPE cartridge was equivalent to that from a single injection. When compared with conventional HPLC-NMR, a S/N gain of up to five-fold could be achieved for some compounds in a single trapping step. A major advantage of the technique is the independence of the chromatographic step from the NMR step, resulting in greater versatility than conventional HPLC-NMR in the HPLC solvents and NMR solvents that can be used. Practical applications from both drug metabolite and drug impurity identification are presented.