A comparative study of various physicochemically modified capillaries used in CE technique for the three distinct analytical purposes.

The five different commercially offered capillaries, bare silica, one dynamically and three permanently coated, have been tested with respect to the three distinct bioanalytical issues: (i) achiral and chiral separation of small mass molecules, warfarin and its six isomeric hydroxy-derivatives; (ii) ultraselective separation of transferrin and albumin including differentiation between the diferric, two monoferric and iron-free forms of transferrin; and (iii) pioneering identification of albumin-induced shifts of acid dissociation constant by using CE instrumentation, revealed for warfarin and six hydroxywarfarins. As a result all of these pharmacologically and biochemically-relevant purposes have been reached, but using different capillaries. The dynamically coated silica capillary has allowed for the first time to separate warfarin from its six main hydroxy-metabolites by CE with high resolution. The bare silica capillary has performed well in cyclodextrin-assisted enantioseparation of these compounds. The neutral capillary has provided excellent resolution and performance in separation of proteins. The amine capillary, in turn, has occurred to be the best choice for identification of albumin-induced pKa shifts occurring in vivo, omitting capillary clogging and providing better sensitivity than the neutral capillary. This work reveals specific predispositions and shows that there is no universal capillary which may be applied to all issues.