ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews basic chemometric strategies used in the chromatographic analysis of pharmaceuticals, namely, raw drug material, drug and its metabolite, commercial drug dosage form, herbal medicine and drug– food supplements, and active compounds in biological fluids. The major aim of chemometrics is to extract more useful information from signals such as spectra, voltammogram, chromatogram, and other several formats obtained from chemical instruments. In chromatography, the similarity of physical and chemical features of analyzed pharmaceuticals gives rise to co-eluted peaks or overlapping peaks. This problem can be resolved using two different chemometric strategies. Experimental design and optimization is a widespread and powerful methodology for the method development processes to reach optimal experimental conditions and instrumental settings. In the applications of chemometrics in chromatographic analysis, the multivariate optimization methodologies are very efficient chemometric tools for the identification of main factor effects and their interactions on experimental response in order to overcome the disadvantages of "one factor at a time" optimization.
