Cellulases as chiral selectors

Cellulases are powerful chiral selectors especially for the separation of basic drugs. They have found applications both in liquid chromatography and capillary electrophoresis. Cellulases, which are produced in large amounts, are well characterised and thus useful for fundamental studies of the chiral recognition mechanism using, for instance, computer graphics. In this article, some guidelines and procedures are given for the optimisation of enantioselective separations by the mobile phase composition (e.g., pH, charged and uncharged organic modifiers). The influence of solute structure on the enantioselectivity obtained on the cellulase phase is also discussed.