Stability-indicating capillary zone electrophoresis method for the assessment of recombinant human granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor and its correlation with reversed-phase liquid chromatography method and bioassay

A stability-indicating capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) method was validated for the analysis of granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (rhGM-CSF) using leuprorelin acetate (LA), as internal standard (IS). A fused-silica capillary (75 μm i.d.; effective length, 72 cm) was used at 25 °C; the applied voltage was 12 kV. The background electrolyte solution consisted of 50 mM di-sodium hydrogen phosphate solution at pH 8.8. Injections were performed using a pressure mode at 50 mbar for 9 s, with detection by photodiode array detector set at 200 nm. Specificity and stability-indicating capability were established in degradation studies, which also showed that there was no interference of the excipients. The method was linear over the concentration range of 2.5–200 μg mL−1 (r2 = 0.9995) and the limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantitation (LOQ) were 0.79 μg mL−1 and 2.5 μg mL−1, respectively. The accuracy was 99.14% with bias lower than 1.40%. The method was applied to the quantitative analysis of biopharmaceutical formulations, and the results were correlated to those of a validated reversed-phase LC method (RP-LC), and an in vitro bioassay, showing non-significant differences (p > 0.05).