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Development of Nanotubule Membranes for Enantioseparation and Bioseparation

Many medicinal molecules are enantiomers, which differ from each other in pharmacological activity, side effect, hepatic metabolism, and state of equilibrium binding to blood plasma proteins. Enantioseparation is, therefore,an important step in pharmaceutical analysis and production. Currently, both analytical and large-scale enantioseparation have been performed on chromatographic methods using various chiral stationary phases. In the past decade, efforts have been made to develop microporous chiral membranes for large-scale enantioseparation because membrane-based separation is more economical and faster processing compared with the traditional methods. However, the membranes developed so far have been poor in their enantioselectivity, which has severely limited their industrial use. Over the past few years, template-synthesized nanotubule membranes have been found to exhibit some unique capabilities in chemical and biochemical separation. To improve the chiral selectivity of the membrane-based enantioseparation, we propose to develop nanotubule membrane with proper proteins immobilized on; the membrane will be made into cartridges and placed in a High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) for testing and operation. Nanotubule membranes can have a controlled pore size on the order of nanometers and hence offer excellent steric exclusivity for various chemicals. In addition, some proteins, such as human serum albumin (HSA) and apoenzymes, can selectively bind enantiomers through a combination of electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions. Combining the chiral selectivity of proteins and the steric exclusivity of nanotubules, the proposed protein immobilized nanotubule membranes are expected to provide high enantioselectivity.