CHROMATOGRAPHY, Vol. 31 (2010), No. 1, pp. -37

Separation of enantiomers using chiral chromatography is a well-accepted technology as a simple and reliable method to determine optical purity of target compounds from R&D to QC in pharmaceutical, agricultural and food industries. Among many commercially available chiral columns, polysaccharide-derived columns are most widely used in the market due to its broad separation ability, and it’s applicability has been expanded by wide variety of mobile phases for “immobilized” columns which are stable in many organic solvents. The diversity of mobile phases is expected to be very beneficial not only to analytical separations but also to preparative ones, especially industrial scale production using simulated moving-bed (SMB) technique, in terms of productivity of chiral compounds. In this review, a preparative separation process based on polysaccharide-derived chiral stationary phases (CSPs) and SMB technique is described.