LC/MS/MS analysis of vesnarinone and its principal metabolites in plasma and urine

• Published in: Journal of pharmaceutical and biomedical analysis 1999, Vol.18 (6), p.1037-1045
• Main Authors: Tata, PrasadN.V., Schorno, KarlS, Cowart, T.Douglas, Bramer, StevenL
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analysis; Biological and medical sciences; Biotransformation; Cardiotonic Agents - analysis; Cardiotonic Agents - blood; Cardiotonic Agents - urine; Chromatography, Liquid; General pharmacology; Humans; LC/MS/MS; Mass Spectrometry; Medical sciences; Metabolites; Parent ion; Pharmacology. Drug treatments; Product ion; Quinolines - analysis; Quinolines - blood; Quinolines - urine; Reproducibility of Results; Spectrophotometry, Ultraviolet; Vesnarinone
• ISSN: 0731-7085; 1873-264X
• DOI: 10.1016/S0731-7085(98)00194-0

An LC/MS/MS assay was developed and successfully used to quantitate vesnarinone and its principal metabolites (OPC-8230, OPC-18136, and OPC-18137) in human plasma and urine. Samples were pre-treated with liquid–solid extraction followed by simultaneous monitoring of primary and daughter ions which were used for the identification and quantitation of the analytes on LC/MS/MS. This assay offers advantages of specificity, speed and greater sensitivity over the previously developed HPLC-UV assay. The lower limit of quantitation is 500 ng ml −1 for vesnarinone and 20 ng ml −1 for OPC-8230, OPC-18137, and OPC-18136 in plasma. Methodology is similar for the estimation of these analytes in urine with the lower limit of quantitation being 500 ng ml −1 for vesnarinone and 100 ng ml −1 for each metabolite. Ascorbic acid was added to stabilize the analytes from degradation. This LC/MS/MS method was developed to overcome many practical problems associated with the HPLC method. The LC/MS/MS method offers the flexibility of analyzing additional metabolites and changing the linearity range to accommodate the differences in linear range (200–10 000 ng ml −1 for vesnarinone and 20–1000 for metabolites) for the analytes.