A novel approach for the quantification of paclitaxel loaded in ethyl cellulose/kollicoat and ethylcellulose/eudragit colloidal particles by UPLC-PDA.

An optimized rapid reversed phase ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC-PDA) method has been developed and validated for precise and accurate quantification of paclitaxel in drug delivery systems. The chromatographic separation was attained on L1 (USP) column (2.1 ×50 mm, 1.7µm) with an isocratic mobile phase comprised of acetonitrile and water (1:1; flow rate 0.6 mL/min) and detection was executed at 227 nm by PDA detector. The proposed UPLC-PDA method is found to be rapid with retention time of 1.37 min, selective with homogenous peaks and sensitive with Limit of Detection (LOD) of 0.08µg/mL and Limit of Quantification (LOQ) of 2.6µg/mL. The method showed excellent linearity (R2>0.998) over the range of 0.1 to 0.4mg/mL and applied for the paclitaxel quantification in different formulations with no inference of excipients. Thus, the proposed approach has potential for rapid estimation of drug purity, assay and release profile from pharmaceutical preparations.