Chiral Separation (US7,015,462)

Recent research by Washington State University and Excellims scientists clearly demonstrates that by modifying the drift gas with chiral molecules, IMS can provide a novel and rapid separation technique for chiral compounds. Similar to chiral chromatography and capillary electrophoresis, the ability of chiral ion mobility spectrometry (CIMS) to examine enantiomeric mixtures is based upon the interaction of analytes with neutral chiral modifiers. Excellims offers an optional gas mixer and infuser for its HPIMS and HPIMS-MS systems that result in a rapid chiral separation and characterization instrument.

This unique system can not only separate chiral molecules in milliseconds, but also reduces method development time to a fraction of that normally required for HPLC. Great separation speed and easy method development using the CIMS-MS make it the method of choice for many applications where analysis time is a critical consideration. CIMS-MS, separating and identifying chiral compounds in seconds, can potentially replace chiral chromatography when chiral analysis time is a critical consideration. It can be used to directly measure enantiomeric excess of chiral ingredients in pharmaceutical products and may serve to increase throughput for chirality measurements in drug discovery when hundreds of drug compounds are being screened as drug candidates. Rapid enantiomeric excess measurement is essential in the drug discovery process and QA/QC of pharmaceutical products. The CIMS-MS can also be used for the analysis of chiral compounds in complex mixtures for quantification and detection of biomarkers, metabolites and other bioactive compounds in biomedical research.