High-throughput determination of fudosteine in human plasma by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry, following protein precipitation in the 96-well plate format

A 96-well protein precipitation, liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) method has been developed and fully validated for the determination of fudosteine in human plasma. After protein precipitation of the plasma samples (50 μL) by the methanol (150 μL) containing the internal standard (IS), erdosteine, the 96-well plate was vortexed for 5 min and centrifuged for 15 min. The 100 μL supernatant and 100 μL mobile phase were added to another plate and mixed and then the mixture was directly injected into the LC–MS/MS system in the negative ionization mode. The separation was performed on a XB-CN column for 3.0 min per sample using an eluent of methanol–water (60:40, v/v) containing 0.005% formic acid. Multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) using the precursor-product ion transitions m/z 178 → 91 and m/z 284 → 91 was performed to quantify fudosteine and erdosteine, respectively. The method was sensitive with a lower limit of quantification (LLOQ) of 0.02 μg mL−1, with good linearity (r > 0.999) over the linear range of 0.02–10 μg mL−1. The within- and between-run precision was less than 5.5% and accuracy ranged from 94.2 to 106.7% for quality control (QC) samples at three concentrations of 0.05, 1 and 8 μg mL−1. The method was employed in the clinical pharmacokinetic study of fudosteine formulation product after oral administration to healthy volunteers.