Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.139, No.12, 4294-4297, 2017
Peptide Metal-Organic Frameworks for Enantioselective Separation of Chiral Drugs
We report the use of a chiral Cu(II) 3D metal organic framework (MOF) based on the tripeptide Gly-L-His-Gly (GHG) for the enantioselective separation of metamphetamine and ephedrine. Monte Carlo simulations suggest that chiral recognition is linked to preferential binding of one of the enantiomers as a result of either stronger or additional H-bonds with the framework that lead to energetically more stable diastereomeric adducts. Solid-phase extraction of a racemic mixture by using Cu(GHG) as the extractive phase permits isolating >50% of the (+)-ephedrine enantiomer as target compound in only 4 min. To our knowledge, this represents the first example of a MOF capable of separating chiral polar drugs.