QSRR Approach: Application to Retention Mechanism in Liquid Chromatography

Abstract

One-factor-at-a-time experimentation was used for a long time as gold-standard optimization for liquid chromatographic (LC) method development. This approach has two downsides as it requires a needlessly great number of experimental runs and it is unable to identify possible factor interactions. At the end of the last century, however, this problem could be solved with the introduction of new chemometric strategies. This chapter aims at presenting quantitative structure–retention relationship (QSRR) models with structuring possibilities, from the point of feature selection through various machine learning algorithms that can be used in model building, for internal and external validation of the proposed models. The presented strategies of QSRR model can be a good starting point for analysts to use and adopt them as a good practice for their applications. QSRR models can be used in predicting the retention behavior of compounds, to point out the molecular features governing the retention, and consequently to gain insight into the retention mechanisms. In terms of these applications, special attention was drawn to modified chromatographic systems, characterized by mobile or stationary phase modifications. Although chromatographic methods are applied in a wide variety of fields, the greatest attention has been devoted to the analysis of pharmaceuticals.