Use of Gamithromycin as a Chiral Selector in Capillary Electrophoresis

In this short communication, we report the use of a second-generation macrolide antibiotic, gamithromycin (Gam), as a novel chiral selector for enantioseparation in capillary electrophoresis (CE). A preliminary analysis of the experiment results shows that Gam is especially suitable for the separation of chiral primary amines. Factors influencing enantioseparations were systematically investigated including the composition of the background electrolyte (BGE), concentration of Gam, the type and proportion of organic solvents, applied voltage, etc. In particular, N-Methylformamide (NMF) was successfully used as a non-aqueous solvent for Gam, and shown to be extremely effective for the separation of primaquine (PMQ) and 1-aminoindan (AMI) when used alone or mixed with other commonly used non-aqueous solvents (e.g. methanol). To our knowledge this was also the first application of NMF as a non-aqueous solvent for antibiotic chiral selectors in CE. The best separations were obtained with 100 mM Tris, 125 mM H₃BO₃ and 80 mM Gam in methanol/NMF (25:75) solvent for PMQ and AMI, or 80-100 mM Gam in methanol for the other model analytes. Among the analytes, the resolution (Rs) of amlodipine (AML) reached up to 15.65, which is to our knowledge the highest value ever reported in CE studies for this compound (except for using molecularly imprinted polymers technique).