Reversed-phase liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection for simultaneous quantitation of indinavir and propranolol from ex-vivo rat intestinal permeability studies

A simple, rapid, sensitive and specific reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatographic (RP-HPLC) method involving ultraviolet detection (λ=210 nm) was developed for analysis of indinavir along with propranolol in samples obtained from ex vivo intestinal permeability studies. Chromatography was carried out on C-18 column with mobile phase comprising of phosphate buffer-acetonitrile (68:32, v/v) pumped at flow rate of 1 ml/min. The proposed method has a short run time of 12 min and involves a simple sample preparation for the purpose of reducing permeability model artifacts and to concentrate the samples. Fluorescein was used as internal standard. The proposed method has been validated with regard to specificity, detection limit, recovery, accuracy and precision. For both the drugs, method was found to be selective, linear (R2≈0.999), accurate (recovery = 100–105%) and precise (<3% R.S.D.) in the range of 2–20 μg/ml. The limit-of-detection and limit-of-quantification of the method were 40 ng/ml and 100 ng/ml for indinavir, and 30 and 80 ng/ml for propranolol, respectively. Indinavir, a widely prescribed HIV protease inhibitor, suffer from bioavailability problems where involvement of P-glycoprotein mediated drug efflux may play a significant role. The proposed method was successfully applied for intestinal permeability of indinavir to estimate the contribution of P-glycoprotein in limiting its oral bioavailability. The advantage of the developed method lies in the simultaneous determination of propranolol, a passive integrity marker, routinely employed in permeability studies and its selectivity in presence of various P-gp modulators and permeability markers.