Capillary electrochromatography applied to drug analysis

The analysis of drugs is a topic of great interest in different application fields such as the pharmaceutical industry, control laboratories, biomedicine, biochemistry, etc. This is due to the systematic use of drugs in humans and animals and therefore the knowledge of drugs’ composition, purity, metabolites, etc. are strongly related to health. Drug analysis is performed utilizing some analytical techniques offering high precision, efficiency, resolution. Among them, microfluidic techniques such as capillary electrophoresis, nano-liquid chromatography, and capillary electrochromatography (CEC) have been studied and applied for the drugs achiral and chiral separations. In CEC mobile phase and analytes are moved by an electroosomotic flow (EOF) generated by the application of a high electric field. High efficiency is obtained due to the plug-like flow profile of the EOF. CEC has been studied for different classes of compounds as well as due to presence of intraparticle flow. In this review, the main features and limitations of CEC have been presented and discussed. Studies, reported in the period 2018–2021, about drugs analysis have been reported.