This report covers advances in capillary electrophoresis (CE) from January 2018 through September 2019. A summary of the literature during this time period is insightful. A search performed using the SciFinder Scholar database for journal reports (limited to English) using the term capillary electrophoresis returned approximately 1,800 publications.
Further analysis of this list provided a snapshot of activity in biomolecular research. Classes of biomolecules most frequently associated with CE publications were proteins, drugs, DNA and metabolites. Another measure of the impact of CE is the translation of this technology into society.
A search of patent activity illustrating this process of CE technology transfer returned 346 patents published in all languages, with a substantial contribution reported only in Chinese (198 patents) or English (98 patents).
Established applications of CE continued to serve as the gold standard for molecular separations providing analytical assays, enantiomeric resolution and DNA analyses for human identification. The versatility of CE for biological systems is exemplified by the rise of the technique in several areas. Metabolomics research involving measurements of large sets of molecules with subtle structural differences benefits from rapid separations achieved with high peak capacity and automated instruments.
Single cell and sub-cellular analyses continue to progress in CE because of the size compatibility of the technique with the sample. Other examples of areas utilizing CE that are accelerating include portable and printable instrumentation, affinity interaction, as well as proteomics. As an established analytical tool, CE instrumentation and methods have been designed to be accessible and easily adopted by researchers with expertise in areas beyond the field of separations.
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Generally, publications including CE measurements either outline innovations in the technique or they are compelling applications of a mature analytical approach. The goal of this review, which is limited to 180 citations, is to communicate an overview of recent developments, focusing on reports describing advances to the technology. Although publications that utilize CE are found in a diverse set of periodicals, the reports included in this review are from journals that are popular in the field of analytically-based separation chemistry.