Determination of kurarinone in rat plasma by UPLC–MS/MS

• Published in: Journal of chromatography. B, Analytical technologies in the biomedical and life sciences Analytical technologies in the biomedical and life sciences, 2015-04, Vol.986-987, p.31-34
• Main Authors: Zhang, Wei-min, Li, Rui-fang, Qiu, Jian-fei, Zhang, Zhi-yin, Wang, Hong-bo, Bian, Lu, Lei, Jia-hui
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Administration, Intravenous; Animals; Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid - methods; Drug Stability; Flavonoids - administration & dosage; Flavonoids - blood; Flavonoids - chemistry; Flavonoids - pharmacokinetics; Kurarinone; Linear Models; Male; Pharmacokinetics; Rat plasma; Rats; Rats, Sprague-Dawley; Reproducibility of Results; Sensitivity and Specificity; Tandem Mass Spectrometry - methods; UPLC–MS/MS
• ISSN: 1570-0232; 1873-376X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jchromb.2015.02.005

•A LC–MS/MS method was fully validated to determine kurarinone in rat plasma.•This is the most sensitive analysis for kurarinone.•The plasma sample was prepared by liquid–liquid extraction with ethyl acetate.•Kurarinone was analyzed in rat plasma up to 6h after administration. A sensitive and rapid ultra performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC–MS/MS) method was developed to determine kurarinone in rat plasma using chlorzoxazone as the internal standard (IS). Sample preparation was accomplished through a liquid–liquid extraction procedure with ethyl acetate to 0.2mL plasma sample. The analyte and IS were separated on an Acquity UPLC BEH C18 column (2.1mm×50mm, 1.7μm) with the mobile phase of acetonitrile and 1% formic acid in water with gradient elution at a flow rate of 0.40mL/min. The detection was performed on a triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometer equipped with electrospray ionization (ESI) by multiple reactions monitoring (MRM) of the transitions at m/z 437.0→301.2 for kurarinone and m/z 168.1→132.1 for IS. The linearity of this method was found to be within the concentration range of 20–2000ng/mL with a lower limit of quantification of 20ng/mL. Only 3.0min was needed for an analytical run. The matrix effect was 94.7–107.2% for kurarinone. The intra- and inter-day precision (RSD%) were less than 8.2% and accuracy (RE%) was within ±9.0%. The recovery ranged from 77.3% to 85.6%. Kurarinone was sufficiently stable under all relevant analytical conditions. The method was also successfully applied to the pharmacokinetic study of kurarinone in rats.