Development of liquid chromatographic enantiomer separation methods and validation for the estimation of (R)-enantiomer in eslicarbazepine acetate.

Chiral separation method development was carried out for eslicarbazepine acetate and its (R)-enantiomer on diverse chiral stationary phases. Better chiral selectivity was observed on cellulose tris-(3,5-dichlorophenylcarbamate) immobilized column (Chiralpak IC-3). Under polar organic mode (POM), with 100% acetonitrile as mobile phase and 0.5 ml/min flow, a resolution close to three was achieved. With normal phase (NP) mobile phase consisting dichloromethane:ethanol (90:10, v/v) and 1.0 ml/min flow, a resolution close to six was achieved. Detection was done by UV at 220 and 240 nm respectively. Both the methods were found to be robust and were validated with respect to robustness, precision, linearity, limit of detection, limit of quantification and accuracy. The proposed methods are suitable for the accurate estimation of (R)-enantiomer in bulk drug samples up to 0.1% when a 1mg/ml analyte test solution is chromatographed.

Degradation studies of pentoxifylline: Isolation and characterization of a novel gem-dihydroperoxide derivative as major oxidative degradation product.

Pentoxifylline was subjected to various stress conditions and degradation profile was studied with conventional LCMS. Interestingly, under oxidative stress conditions the drug substance underwent distinct transformation to give rise to a single major degradation product. The structure of this product was elucidated using 1D, 2D NMR spectroscopy, high resolution mass spectrometry (Q-TOF LC/MS) and found to be a novel gem-dihydroperoxide, namely 1-(5,5-Bis-hydroperoxy-hexyl)-3,7-dimethyl-3,7-dihydro-purine-2,6-dione. An efficient stability indicating liquid chromatographic separation method was developed for pentoxifylline and its three degradation products (including two from base hydrolysis) using 1.8 microm, C18 reverse phase column and UHPLC. Baseline separation was achieved with a run time of 4 min. The analytical assay method was validated with respect to system suitability, specificity, linearity, range, precision, accuracy and robustness.