High-Performance Liquid Chromatography Methods for Determining the Purity of Drugs with Weak UV Chromophores – A Review

High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is one of the most useful techniques for the separation and determination of new drugs with a complex nature. The selection of an HPLC detector depends on the chemical nature of molecules, potential impurities, matrix of the sample, sensitivity, availability, and/or cost of the detector. HPLC methods with UV/Vis detectors are the most used and simple analytical procedures in pharmaceutical applications, but it is limited to compounds that possess a chromophore. Hence, this review provides an overview on the development of analytical methods for compounds with weak chromophores. The review described selected papers about HPLC based methods in the PubMed, Scopus, Semantic Scholar and ScienceDirect databases, basically between 2006 and 2023. Of the analytical studies, the HPLC methods with UV-Vis, FLD, CAD, ELSD, RID, ECD, CLND and MS detection were found. This study is a comparison of different types of detection that are described in scientific literature and are routinely used for compounds with weak chromophores. It is expected that this review will be helpful for scientists in the analytical development fields to improve research related to the drug candidates and to ensure its quality according to regulatory levels.