A sensitive and selective liquid chromatographic tandem mass spectrometric assay for simultaneous quantification of novel trioxane antimalarials in different biomatrices using sample-pooling approach for high throughput pharmacokinetic studies

In the present studies, to give momentum to traditionally low throughput pharmacokinetic screening, a bioanalytical method based on the concept of sample pooling for simultaneous bioanalysis of multiple compounds is discussed. A sensitive, selective, specific and rapid HPLC/ESI-MS/MS assay method was developed and validated for the simultaneous quantitation of three novel trioxane antimalarials (99–357, 99–408 and 99–411) in rat plasma using trioxane analogue as internal standard. The suitably validated bioanalytical method was then further extrapolated to rabbit and monkey plasma by performing partial validation. Extraction from the plasma involves a simple two-step liquid–liquid extraction with n-hexane. The analytes were chromatographed on a cyano column by isocratic elution with acetonitrile:ammonium acetate buffer (pH 6) (85:15, v/v) and analyzed by mass spectrometry in multiple reaction-monitoring (MRM) mode. The chromatographic run time was 5.5 min and the weighted (1/x2) calibration curves were linear over a range of 1.56–200 ng/ml. The limit of detection (LOD) and lower limit of quantification (LLOQ) in rat plasma, rabbit plasma and monkey plasma were 0.78 and 1.56 ng/ml, respectively, for all three analytes. The intra- and inter-batch accuracy and precision in terms of % bias and % relative standard deviation were found to be well within the acceptable limits (<15%). The average absolute recoveries of 99–357, 99–408 and 99–411 from spiked plasma samples were >90%, >70% and >60%, respectively. The assay method described here could be applied to study the pharmacokinetics of 99–357, 99–408 and 99–411 using sample-pooling technique.