Łukasz Komsta

Revisiting thin-layer chromatography as a lipophilicity determination tool—A comparative study on several techniques with a model solute set

The lipophilicity of a compound is a fundamental property related to pharmaceutical and biomedical activity. As many approaches are mixed together in every-day published studies, the subject needs some standardization. The paper presents a comparative study on several approaches of TLC lipophilicity determination: a single TLC run, extrapolation of a retention, principal component analysis of a retention matrix, PARAFAC on a three-way array and a PLS regression. All techniques were applied to 35 model solutes with simple molecules, using nine concentrations of six modifiers: acetonitrile, acetone, dioxane, propan-2-ol, methanol and tetrahydrofurane. The elaborated comparative analysis formed several general recommendations. Methanol and dioxane were the best modifiers, while acetonitrile gave the worst and inacceptable correlation of retention with lipophilicity. Surprisingly, good correlations were obtained for the single TLC runs and this method is underestimated in the literature. The advanced chemometric processing proposed recently, such as PCA, PARAFAC and PLS did not show a visible advantage comparing to classical methods. A need to use a robust regression and robust correlation measures, due to presence of significant outliers, was also noticed and studied.

Investigation of antiradical activity of plant material by thin-layer chromatography with image processing

A novel, easy, and cheap technique for preliminary quantitative evaluation of antiradical activity, based on HPTLC, has been proposed. This method combines chromatographic separation of polar compounds, present in plant extracts, with data analysis by means of image processing software. Bleaching of the purple DPPH colour, caused by substances with antiradical activity, was observed and recorded using a photo camera. ImageJ, a free and open source image processing program was used for quantitative measurements. For evaluation of assay efficiency, the antiradical activity of rose flower extracts (from Rosa rugosa Thunb.) was expressed as Standard Activity Coefficients (SACs), which are relative measures of the activity to the four well known antioxidants; i.e., quercetin, gallic acid, protocatechuic acid, and Trolox. The method uses small amounts of free radical and is easily applicable - only a digital camera with freely available open source software is required.

Comparison of Several Methods of Chromatographic Baseline Removal with a New Approach Based on Quantile Regression

The article is intended to introduce and discuss a new quantile regression method for baseline detrending of chromatographic signals. It is compared with current methods based on polynomial fitting, spline fitting, LOESS, and Whittaker smoother, each with thresholding and reweighting approach. For curve flexibility selection in existing algorithms, a new method based on skewness of the residuals is successfully applied. The computational efficiency of all approaches is also discussed. The newly introduced methods could be preferred to visible better performance and short computational time. The other algorithms behave in comparable way, and polynomial regression can be here preferred due to short computational time.

The start-to-end chemometric image processing of 2D thin-layer videoscans

The purpose of the research was to recommend a unified procedure of image preprocessing of 2D thin layer videoscans for further supervised or unsupervised chemometric analysis. All work was done with open source software. The videoscans saved as JPG files underwent the following procedures: denoising using a median filter, baseline removal with the rollerball algorithm and nonlinear warping using spline functions. The application of the proposed procedure enabled filtration of random difference between images (background intensity changes and spatial differences of the spots location). After the preprocessing only spot intensities have an influence on the performed PCA or other techniques. The proposed technique was successfully applied to recognize the differences between three Carex species from the 2D videoscans of the extracts. The proposed solution may be of value for the any chemometric task--both unsupervised and supervised.

A comparative study on several algorithms for denoising of thin layer densitograms

This paper compares classical filtering techniques (Savitzky-Golay, Adaptive Degree Polynomial Filter, Fourier denoising, Butterworth and Chebyshev IIR filters) and the wavelet shrinkage (31 mother wavelets, 3 thresholding techniques and 11 decomposition levels). These techniques were compared with the original noisy signal and the reference signal, denoised experimentally by the averaging of 64 measurements. The best similarity to reference signal was observed in the case of filters, but they slightly oversmoothed the signal. The wavelet shrinkage gave less denoised signals. The significant influence of the thresholding technique and decomposition level was observed (the best conditions--the level 2 or 3 and soft thresholding). Changing of the mother wavelet almost does not change the result, which is similar to the earlier literature findings. The presented results can be used as general recommendations for denoising of the densitometric fingerprints before applying further chemometric algorithms. The best choices are: Savitzky-Golay filter of appropriate (optimized against the autocorrelation) window width or wavelet shrinkage with Haar wavelet, soft thresholding and high decomposition level.

Reversed-phase thin-layer chromatography technique for the comparison of the lipophilicity of selected non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

The chromatographic behavior of a series of coxibs and oxicams, drugs from a group of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, was studied by reversed-phase thin-layer chromatography with binary mobile phases containing water and the organic modifiers: methanol, acetone, 1,4-dioxane, acetonitrile and 2-propanol. Linear relationships were obtained between the retention RM values of the compounds and the concentration of organic modifier in the mobile phase. Values of RM0, represent the theoretical RM values at 0% organic solvent in the mobile phase were calculated by extrapolation. These experimental lipophilicity values were correlated with lipophilicity (logP) from databases. The obtained results show that reversed-phase chromatography (experimental parameters) may be a good instrument for analytics in describing the lipophilic nature of investigated compounds as well as the activity.

Suppressing the charged coupled device noise in univariate thin-layer videoscans: a comparison of several algorithms.

The digital processing of chromatographic thin-layer plate images has increasing popularity among last years. When using a camera instead of flatbed scanner, the charged coupled device (CCD) noise is a well-known problem-especially when scanning dark plates with weakly fluorescing spots. Various techniques are proposed to denoise (smooth) univariate signals in chemometric processing, but the choice could be difficult. In the current paper the classical filters (Savitzky-Golay, adaptive degree polynomial filter, Fourier denoising, Butterworth and Chebyshev infinite impulse response filters) were compared with the wavelet shrinkage (31 mother wavelets, 3 thresholding techniques and 8 decomposition levels). The signal obtained from 256 averaged videoscans was treated as the reference signal (with noise naturally suppressed, which was found to be almost white one). The best choice for denoising was the Haar mother wavelet with soft denoising and any decomposition level larger than 1. Satisfying similarity to reference signal was also observed in the case of Butterworth filter, Savitzky-Golay smoothing, ADPF filter, Fourier denoising and soft-thresholded wavelet shrinkage with any mother wavelet and middle to high decomposition level. The Chebyshev filters, Whittaker smoother and wavelet shrinkage with hard thresholding were found to be less efficient. The results obtained can be used as general recommendations for univariate denoising of such signals.

Comparative validation of quetiapine Determination in tablets by NP-HPTLC and RP-HPTLC with densitometric and videodensitometric detection

Two new simple and accurate methods for determination of quetiapine in tablets-normal phase (NP) and reversed-phase (RP) high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC), each with densitometric and videodensitometric detection, were developed and validated. NP-HPTLC was developed with HPTLC silica F254 plates and hexane-dioxane-propylamine 1:9:0.4 (v/v) as mobile phase. RPHPTLC was carried out using HPTLC RP8 F254 plates with tetrahydrofuran-phosphate buffer, pH 9.0, 5:5 (v/v) as mobile phase. The silica gel plates were developed to a distance of 9 cm and RP8 plates to a distance of 4.5 cm. Both analyses were performed in horizontal chambers and scanned with a densitometer at 243 nm and a video-densitometer at 254 nm. Calibration plots were linear in the range 0.2-1.2 μg quetiapine per spot for NP-HPTLC and in the range 0.1-1.1 μg for RP-HPTLC. The precision and accuracy of the four methods were fully compared and no significant differences were observed. The methods can be used in routine pharmaceutical analysis.

Lipophilicity study of eight cephalosporins by reversed-phase thin-layer chromatographic method.

The lipophilicity (R(M0)) and specific hydrophobic surface area for the representatives of four generation cephalosporins have been determined by reversed-phase thin-layer chromatography, and the effect of different mobile-phase modifiers (such as methanol, acetonitrile, acetone, 1,4-dioxane and 2-propanol) on the retention has been studied. The compounds studied showed typical retention behavior; their R(M) values decreased linearly with increasing concentration of the organic modifier in the eluent. The linear correlations between the volume fraction of the organic solvent and the R(M) values over a limited range were established for each solute, resulting in high values of correlation coefficients (>0.95 in most cases). R(M) values were determined by various concentrations of organic modifier, and the correlation obtained was extrapolated to 0% of organic modifier. Chromatographically established logP (R(M0)) parameters were compared with computationally calculated partition coefficients values (AClogP, ALOGP, KOWWIN, ALOGPs, XLOGP2, MLOGP and XLOGP3) and experimental octanol-water logP values (measured by the shake flask method). The received results demonstrate that RP-TLC may be a good alternative technique for analytics in describing the lipophilic nature of investigated cephalosporins as well as the activity.

Effects of two oral antidiabetics, pioglitazone and repaglinide, on aconitase inactivation, inflammation and oxidative/nitrosative stress in tissues under alloxan-induced hyperglycemia.

Pathological changes identified in different tissues in hyperglycemic state are undoubtedly connected with increased oxidative/nitrosative stress and inflammation. In our study myeloperoxidase (MPO), nitrotyrosine and lipid peroxidation were enhanced in the heart and lung of alloxan-treated hyperglycemic animals. Additionally, pulmonary aconitase was inhibited. In the testis the changes occurred as an increase of MPO and lipid peroxidation, and as a decrease of aconitase. The effects of two different antidiabetics, the peroxisome proliferator activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) agonist, pioglitazone, and a short acting insulin secretagogue, repaglinide, on the mentioned parameters, were investigated and compared. The insulin deficient alloxan-induced hyperglycemic animals were used to differentiate a direct anti-oxidative effect of the drugs from secondary effects mediated via increased insulin sensitivity or secretion. Pioglitazone acted by normalization of pulmonary and testicular aconitase, normalization of pulmonary and cardiac nitrotyrosine, reduction of pulmonary and testicular MPO, and by reduction of lipid peroxidation in all tissues examined. Repaglinide prevented oxidative changes by normalization of aconitase activity in the lung and testis, and by reduction of lipid peroxidation and nitrotyrosine in the heart and lung. At the same time, no effect of this drug on MPO was observed. Finally, principal component analysis was performed to explore and visualize similarities and differences of the results obtained for the both drugs.