Membrane Separation of Chiral Pharmaceutical Products

Abstract

The production of enantiomerically pure drugs is crucial to the current pharmaceutical industry due to the contrasting pharmacological effects associated with the different enantiomeric forms of a drug. This study investigated the membrane enantiomeric resolution of pharmaceuticals in two approaches: chiral selective membrane fabrication and innovative membrane process design. First, a cellulose membrane functionalized with cyclodextrin derivatives was prepared and the effects of spacer arm lengths were studied in particular. The effects of other parameters were also investigated in the subsequent study which focused on different forms of driving forces using a chitosan functionalized cellulose acetate membrane. Second, two membrane processes: Selective Permeation Enhancement and another system that integrates stereoselective affinity dialysis and ion-exchange membrane partitioned free flow isoelectric focusing were developed. Both showed better optical resolution efficiency over the normal affinity dialysis and affinity ultrafiltration membrane processes under similar experimental conditions, i.e. by using the same membranes.