Preparation and application of molecularly imprinted polymers for chiral HPLC separation of biologically active substances

Chiral separations are one of the important analytical tasks, since there are increasing demands for production of enantiomerically pure compounds. The separation and determination of enantiomers find applications in pharmaceutical and food analysis, and it is necessary to pay attention to the development and improvement of chiral analytical methods. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with chiral stationary phase (CSP) based on molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) is perspective way. One of the main advantage of these stationary phases is the possibility of predetermining the elution order of enantiomers. The presented work is focused on the methods of preparation and the applications of selective sorption materials (MIPs) in the field of HPLC separation of biologically active substances, amino acids. This review contains comprehensive informations about MIP-amino acid synthesis: compositions of polymerization mixture (monomer, template, cross-linker, porogen), type of polymerization and polymerization conditions, what can affect final efficiency of enantioseparation. The most used porogen was toluene, crosslinker ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EDMA) and initiator azoisobutyronitrile (AIBN). MIP CSP prepared for derivatized amino acids show better results (higher resolution) than MIP prepared for underivatized amino acids. MIP are very promising material to be used as stationary phase in HPLC, although further developments and new approaches are necessary to fully exploit their potential.