High-pressure liquid chromatography of drugs. An evaluation of an octadecylsilane stationary phase.

The performance of a commonly used high-pressure liquid chromatographic stationary phase, octadecylsilane, has been evaluated for 30 compounds selected as representative of a wide variety of drug substances. Chromatographic behavior is found to be highly predictable on the basis of pKa and partition coefficient, and the stationary phase should be especially valuable for the separation of acidic and neutral drugs. For basic drugs, however, the column efficiency is poor, detracting from the overall usefulness.