High-performance liquid chromatographic resolution of 1-(1,4-benzodioxane-2-formyl)-piperazine enantiomers after chiral derivatization.

Chiral separation of racemic mixtures is of the greatest importance to the pharmaceutical industry, as the isomers of a given racemate may exhibit substantially different pharmacological effects, not to mention possibly differing toxicity behaviour. A novel chiral separation method is developed for the determination of 1-(1,4-benzodioxane-2-formyl)piperazine (BFP) enantiomers. The indirect resolution is performed by applying precolumn derivatization with the chiral reagent 2,3,4,6-tetra-O-acetyl-beta-D-glucopyranosyl isothiocyanate (GITC). The resulting diastereoisomers are separated on a reversed-phase ODS column with methanol-potassium dihydrogen phosphate (0.02mol/L, 50:50) as mobile phase. UV detection is at 250 nm. The effect of mobile phase composition upon resolution and analysis time is investigated. Two diastereoisomers show nearly base-line separation under optimal chromatographic conditions. The presented study provides a simple and accurate method for the enantiomeric quality control and the optical purity assay of BFP.