Simultaneous determination of quercetin and its metabolites in rat plasma by using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry.

Fast, selective, and sensitive ultra-high performance liquid chromatography method with tandem mass spectrometry detection for the determination of quercetin and its metabolites with various physico-chemical properties such as molecular weight, lipophilicity, and acid-base properties has been developed. These compounds included small hydrophilic phenolic acids and more lipophilic metabolites with preserved flavonoid structure in small amount of rat plasma. The developed method enables selective separation of phenolic acids and a pair of isomers tamarixetin and isorhamnetin with satisfactory peak shapes and a high sensitivity using mass spectrometry detection. In addition, two sample preparation procedures including protein precipitation and microextraction in packed sorbent (MEPS) were optimized. The sample acidification included in protein precipitation as well as optimizing of MEPS sorbents and elution solvents improved isolation of quercetin and related compounds from rat plasma. Finally, both methods developed for sample preparation were fully validated to demonstrate sufficient accuracy and precision and acceptable matrix effects. Both sample preparation approaches combined with mass spectrometry-based quantification allowed the simultaneous determination of quercetin and its metabolites from a small amount of biological samples of only 50 µL. Due to the fast and non-selective parallel sample preparation, the protein precipitation was eventually applied to plasma samples derived from pharmacokinetic studies.

Current antiviral drugs and their analysis in biological materials-Part I: Antivirals against respiratory and herpes viruses.

This review article is the first in the series providing an overview of currently used antiviral drugs and presenting contemporary approaches to their analysis. Large number of available antivirals and their structural variability makes this task very challenging. Trying to cover this topic comprehensively while maintaining reasonable size of the article, the review is presented in two parts. For the purpose of the overall review, antivirals were divided into four groups: (i) antivirals against herpes viruses, (ii) antivirals against respiratory viruses, (iii) antivirals against hepatitis viruses, and (iv) antivirals against HIV. Part one is devoted to the groups (i) and (ii) and also concerns the key features of the bioanalytical method. The mechanisms of action of antivirals against respiratory and herpes viruses and their use in clinical practice are briefly outlined, and the analytical methods for selected representatives of each class are described in more detail. The methods developed for the determination of drugs from these classes mostly include conventional procedures. In contrast, current trends such as UHPLC are used rarely and proper method validation based on requirements of bioanalytical guidelines can be often considered insufficient.

Current antiviral drugs and their analysis in biological materials - Part II: Antivirals against hepatitis and HIV viruses.

This review is a Part II of the series aiming to provide comprehensive overview of currently used antiviral drugs and to show modern approaches to their analysis. While in the Part I antivirals against herpes viruses and antivirals against respiratory viruses were addressed, this part concerns antivirals against hepatitis viruses (B and C) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Many novel antivirals against hepatitis C virus (HCV) and HIV have been introduced into the clinical practice over the last decade. The recent broadening portfolio of these groups of antivirals is reflected in increasing number of developed analytical methods required to meet the needs of clinical terrain. Part II summarizes the mechanisms of action of antivirals against hepatitis B virus (HBV), HCV, and HIV, their use in clinical practice, and analytical methods for individual classes. It also provides expert opinion on state of art in the field of bioanalysis of these drugs. Analytical methods reflect novelty of these chemical structures and use by far the most current approaches, such as simple and high-throughput sample preparation and fast separation, often by means of UHPLC-MS/MS. Proper method validation based on requirements of bioanalytical guidelines is an inherent part of the developed methods.

Development, validation and comparison of UHPSFC and UHPLC methods for the determination of agomelatine and its impurities.

Agomelatine is one of the newest antidepressants. Due to a different mechanism of action it offers a completely new approach in the treatment of depressive disorders. Two chromatographic methods for determination of agomelatine and its impurities were developed. The separations on UHPSFC system were accomplished using stationary phase based on BEH 2-EP and gradient elution with CO2 and methanol containing 20mM ammonium formate and 5% of water. The UHPLC separations were performed on stationary phase BEH Shield RP18. The mixture of acetonitrile and methanol in ratio 1:1 and ammonium acetate buffer pH 9.5 were used as mobile phase. Both developed methods were properly validated in terms of linearity, sensitivity (LOD, LOQ), accuracy and precision according to ICH guidelines. The UHPSFC method was linear in the range 0.25-70µg/ml for all analytes with method accuracy ≥97.4% and ≥100.2% and method intra-day precision RSD ≤2.4 and ≤0.8 for impurities and API (active pharmaceutical ingredient), respectively. The UHPLC method was linear in the range 0.1-10µg/ml for all analytes except three impurities for which the linear range was larger 0.1-25µg/ml. Method accuracy ≥95.7% and ≥95.2% and method intra-day precision RSD ≤2.6 and ≤1.5 were found for impurities and API, respectively. The measurement of tablet samples was performed and the selected parameters of the methods were compared. In conclusion, both methods were appropriate for the determination of agomelatine and its impurities in pharmaceutical quality control (QC), although the UHPSFC method was found as more convenient especially in the method development phase. The advantages of newly developed UHPSFC-PDA (photo diode array detector) method were its environmental friendliness due to the mobile phase used, a very good resolution, selectivity and high speed of analysis (total time of separation was 4.1min).