Study of the enantioselectivity and recognition mechanism of chiral dual system based on chondroitin sulfate D in capillary electrophoresis

Several chiral reagents including cyclodextrins (CDs) and derivatives, crown ethers, proteins, chiral surfactants, and polymers have been involved in dual-selector systems for enantioseparation of a series of compounds by capillary electrophoresis (CE). In this paper, chondroitin sulfate D-based dual-selector system (CSD/CM-β-CD) was firstly established and investigated for the enantioseparation of six basic racemic drugs in capillary electrophoresis. Compared to the single-selector systems, synergistic effect and significantly improved separations for all tested analytes were observed in CSD/CM-β-CD system. The effect of several parameters, such as buffer pH, chiral selector concentration, and applied voltage, was systematically optimized. Meanwhile, to investigate the possible chiral recognition mechanisms in CSD/CM-β-CD synergistic system, we tried to apply the molecular docking method to simulate the host-guest binding procedures of the polysaccharide-based dual system for the first time. The difference in binding free energy was found to correspond to the chiral selectivity factor. The existence of CSD-CM-β-CD complex may give rise to a higher discriminatory ability against the enantiomers, indicating the synergistic effect in CSD/CM-β-CD system.