Evaluation of kasugamycin as a chiral selector in capillary electrophoresis

The discovery of novel chiral selectors always fascinates us. This work describes the chiral separation performances of a new chiral selector (kasugamycin, KAS) in capillary electrophoresis (CE) for six pairs of stereoisomers, including ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, quinine and quinidine, cinchonine and cinchonidine, and amlodipine, promethazine and ofloxacin enantiomers. Kasugamycin, an aminoglycoside antibiotic in agriculture, shows significant biological activity against rice blast with low toxicity. As it turns out, this new chiral selector possesses good CE compatibility and stereoselectivity towards model analytes. In this work, we systematically investigated several separation parameters including kasugamycin concentration, buffer pH, separation voltage and the composition of the buffer solution. A detailed discussion about the chiral recognition mechanism was made based on Statistical Product and Service Solution (SPSS) analysis, NMR experiments (1D and 2D) and molecular modeling. This is the first time that kasugamycin is utilized as a chiral selector in CE, and the development of new chiral selectors from agricultural or veterinary antibiotics deserves more attention.