Capillary electrophoresis as an orthogonal technique in HPLC method validation.

High-performance liquid chromatography is usually used to assay the main compound and organic impurity content of drug substance and drug product during pharmaceutical development. A crucial validation parameter of these methods is specificity--the ability to unequivocally assess the analyte in the presence of component expected to be present. Typically, these include impurities, degradation products, and matrices. Besides adequate chromatographic separation with sufficient selectivity, additional 2- or 3-D spectroscopic or chromatographic tools are frequently necessary for this purpose. In our current practice, HPLC is used with ultraviolet photodiode array detection and on-line mass spectrometry (LC-UVDAD-MS) during the assessment of specificity. Although this approach is very powerful and can solve the majority of problems, separation of isomers of the main compound is still difficult. Since HPLC usually cannot offer the required selectivity and because of the similar molecular weights, structural isomers are not specifically detected using LC-MS. Capillary electrophoresis, on the other hand, offers high separation efficiency and can be applied as an adjunct to HPLC. Therefore, a set of highly selective CE methods is used orthogonally in the specificity assessment of HPLC methods.