Chiral drug analysis in forensic chemistry: An overview

Many substances of forensic interest are chiral and available either as racemates or pure enantiomers. Application of chiral analysis in biological samples can be useful for the determination of legal or illicit drugs consumption or interpretation of unexpected toxicological effects. Chiral substances can also be found in environmental samples and revealed to be useful for determination of community drug usage (sewage epidemiology), identification of illicit drug manufacturing locations, illegal discharge of sewage and in environmental risk assessment. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the application of chiral analysis in biological and environmental samples and their relevance in the forensic field. Most frequently analytical methods used to quantify the enantiomers are liquid and gas chromatography using both indirect, with enantiomerically pure derivatizing reagents, and direct methods recurring to chiral stationary phases. © 2018 by the authors.

Acknowledgments: This work was partially supported through national funds provided by FCT/MCTES- Foundation for Science and Technology from the Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education (PIDDAC) and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the COMPETE-Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade (POFC) programme, under the Strategic Funding UID/Multi/04423/2013, the project PTDC/MAR-BIO/4694/2014 (reference POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016790; Project 3599-Promover a Producao Cientifica e Desenvolvimento Tecnologico e a Constituicao de Redes Tematicas (3599-PPCDT)) in the framework of the programme PT2020 as well as by the project INNOVMAR-Innovation and Sustainability in the Management and Exploitation of Marine Resources (reference NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000035, within Research Line NOVELMAR), supported by North Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and Chiral_Drugs_CESPU_2017.