The news portal "Scientific Russia" has published an article about the study of optical isomers conducted by ISC RAS scientists (https://scientificrussia.ru/articles/ucenye-vyasnili-kak-razdelat-pravye-i-levye-enantiomery-i-bezopasno-ispolzovat-ih-kak-osnovu-dla-lekarstv).
The unique feature of enantiomers (or optical isomers) is that such molecules mirror each other's structure and have similar physical properties but the biological activity of the "left" and "right" enantiomers is not always the same. One enantiomer in a drug composition may happen to produce a therapeutic effect, while the other - be of no use or even cause unfavourable side effects. That is why one of the key problems of pharmaceutical industry is to identify, which enantiomer or a mixture of enantiomers are present in a drug composition.
A group of ISC RAS scientists has proposed two methods to solve this problem. In the first case a molecule of the drug compound was placed inside the hydrophobic cavity of cyclodextrin. Then, by measuring the stability of the inclusion complex formed and its thermodynamic solubility parameters, the researchers determined the drug compound composition, i.e. whether the drug contained a mixture of enantiomers or only the "right" enantiomer.
The second method consisted in measuring the partition coefficients of enantiomers in systems of immiscible solvents, in which the pH level of the aqueous solution corresponded to the physiological values of various parts of the gastro-intestinal tract. The researchers established that the system of octanol and aqueous solution with pH 7.4 was the most effective in identification of the difference between the "right" enantiomer and the enantiomer mixture.
More information about the study can be found in the papers:
