Rapid and sensitive quantitation of the antiproliferative agent mitoguazone in small volumes of plasma by high-performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection

Mitoguazone is an antiproliferative agent used in chemotherapy. This study describes a simple and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatographic method for the determination of mitoguazone in 100 μl of plasma. Samples were deproteinized with 100 μl of a solution of internal standard (amiloride, 10 μg/ml) in acetonitrile. An aliquot of the supernatant was injected onto the column. HPLC separation was achieved on a silica column with the mobile phase of methanol–50 mM potassium phosphate buffer (pH 3)–triethylamine (80:20:0.3, v/v), at a flow-rate of 1 ml/min. The eluent was detected at 320 nm. The retention time was about 5.5 min for amiloride and 12 min for mitoguazone. No endogenous substances were found to interfere. Calibration curves were linear from 0.25 to 50 μg/ml. The absolute recoveries of mitoguazone and amiloride were both greater than 84%. The limit of quantitation was 0.25 μg/ml. The intra- and inter-day precision (expressed as RSD) was 5.8%, or less, and the accuracy was 94.7% of the nominal concentration. The method is suitable in pharmacokinetic investigation and monitoring mitoguazone concentration.