Chemometric comparison of recent chromatographic and electrophoretic methods in a quantitative structure–retention and retention–activity relationship context

The retention characteristics of 21 basic pharmaceutical substances with a considerable difference in hydrophobicity (octanol–water partition coefficients, log P, between −0.026 and 6.45) are considered on an immobilized artificial membrane column, with a micellar liquid chromatography and a micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography method. Utilising principal component analysis (PCA), it is seen that although the main retention principle is the same, the above methods as well as more classical RP-HPLC methods vary in secondary retention mechanisms. Combining the results of different methods a differentiation of the substances into their pharmacological families can be seen with PCA. The high correlations of the retention characteristics with log P and a biological parameter seem little affected by the method used.