Sensitive Method for Enantioseparation of Rivastigmine with Highly Sulfated Cyclodextrin as Chiral Selector by Capillary Electrophoresis

A sensitive method for enantioseparation of a basic drug rivastigmine and determination of its optical impurity by capillary electrophoresis with highly sulfated β-cyclodextrin (HS-β-CD) as the chiral selector is described. In general, enantioseparation of basic chiral compounds is carried out in acidic condition (pH 2.5) to prevent analytes from adsorption on the capillary wall. However, in the case of rivastigmine, the detection sensitivity was too limited to determine the optical impurity of S-rivastigmine lower than 1% when buffer pH was 2.5. It was found that the detection sensitivity was improved 1.6 times just by raising the buffer pH value from 2.5 to 5.8. The poor column efficiency due to the adsorption of the analytes on the capillary wall was resolved by using dynamical coating of the capillary wall with the linear polyacrylamide solution. The experimental parameters such as the concentration of HS-β-CD, buffer pH and buffer ionic strength were optimized, respectively. The method was validated in terms of repeatability, linearity, limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantitation (LOQ). Using the present method, the optical purity of nonracemic rivastigmine with the enantiomeric excess (ee) value of 99.14% was determined.