The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
A sensitive, specific and rapid high-performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (hplc–ms/ms) method has been developed and validated for the determination of danshensu (dss) in rat plasma in the present study. The analytes were separated on a c18 column (50 mm×2.1 mm, 1.7 μm) and a triplequadrupole mass spectrometry equipped with electrospray ionization (esi) source was applied for detection. The simple protein precipitation was applied to extract dss from the plasma (about 80%). The method was linear over the concentration ranges of 50–1000 ng/ml for dss. The lower limit of quantitation (lloq) of dss was 50 ng/ml. The intra-day and inter-day relative standard deviation (rsd) were less than 15% and the relative error (re) were all within 15%. Finally, the method was successfully applied to support the pharmacokinetic study after guanxinsu solution was orally administrated to the sprague–dawley rat, respectively.
Radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae (Danshen in Chinese) is one of the most popular herbs used in many traditional Chinese medicines that have been commonly applied for promoting blood circulation to remove blood stasis, relieving vexation, nourishing the blood and cooling the blood to relieve carbuncles.
Therefore, it is important to determine DSS in the biological samples in order to evaluate the quality of the danshen-contained medicines. Some reversed-phase HPLC and TLC methods have been developed for the determination of DSS.
In the present study, we present a fast, sensitive and selective method for measuring DSS in plasma using ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC–MS/MS) based on the previous work. The LLOQ of 50 ng/mL in plasma corresponded to an on-column sensitivity (the quantity of drug injected on the column per injection) of 125 pg DSS, which was low enough to support the PK study of DSS. The sample was prepared with the simple protein precipitation method. The present method was validated and successfully applied to the PK study after the Chinese herbs guanxinsu was orally administrated to the rats.
Reference standards of DSS (>99.0% purity) and p-hydroxybenzoic acid (IS, (>99.0% purity) was purchased from the National Institute for Control of Pharmaceutical and Biological Products (Beijing, P.R.China). Acetonitrile, methanol and formic acid (HPLC grade) were purchased from Dikma (Richmond Hill, NY, USA). Water was purified using a Milli-Q system (Millipore Corporation, Billerica, MA).
Male Sprague Dawley rats (210-240 g) were obtained from Sino-British Sippr/BK Lab Animal Ltd (Shang-hai, P.R.China). The protocol of the study was reviewed and approved by the Ethical Committee of the Faculty of Medicine, Nanchang Tasly Group Co. Ltd, China.
A triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometer (Micromass Quattro Premier XE mass spectrometer, Waters Corp., Milford, MA, USA) with an electrospray ionization (ESI) interface was employed for analysis. An UPLC BEH C18 column (50 mm×2.1 mm, 1.7 um, waters Corp., Milford, MA, USA) was used to separate the analytes. All data were collected in centroid mode and processed using MassLynxTM NT 4.0 software with a QuanLynxTM program (Waters Corp., Milford, MA, USA).
A gradient elution program was conducted for chromatographic separation with the mobile phase A (acetonitrile), and the mobile phase B (water containing 0.5% formic acid) as follows: 0 min (5%, A), 2.5 min (30%, A), 4.0 min ( 90%, A), 6.0 min (90%, A) and 7.0 min (90%, A) and finished at 7 min. The flow rate was 0.15 mL/min and column temperature was 40 °C. Injection wash solvents were methanol–water–0.1% formic acid (5:95:0.1, v/v/v) and methanol–water–0.1% formic acid (95:5:0.1, v/v/v) for weak and strong wash, respectively. For MS detection, negative ESI was used as the ionization mode. Nitrogen was used as the desolvation and cone gas with a flow rate of 600 and 50 L/h, respectively. High purity argon was used as the collision gas at a pressure of approximately 3.05×10−3 mbar. The optimal MS parameters were as follows: capillary 2.5 kV, source temperature 120 °C, and desolvation temperature 380 °C. Cone voltage was 22 V for both DSS and p-hydroxybenzcic acid. Quantification was performed using multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) of the transitions of
Standard stock solution of DSS was prepared in water at the concentration of 0.4 mg/mL. The working solution of internal standard (1.0 μg/mL) was also prepared in water. A series of standard solutions of 100, 200, 500, 800, 1000, 2000 ng/mL for DSS was prepared by serially diluting the stock solution. All the solutions were stored at 4 °C. DSS calibration curves were prepared by spiking 100 mL of blank rat plasma with 50 μL of DSS standard solution, 50 μL of internal standard solution. The corresponding nominal plasma concentrations for DSS were 50, 100, 250, 400, 500, 1000 ng/mL The quality control (QCs) samples at low, medium, high concentration levels were prepared in the same way as the DSS calibration curves. The nominal plasma concentrations of QC samples were 100, 500, 900 ng/mL.
To 100-μL aliquot of plasma sample, 50-μL of internal standard solution (1 μg/mL), 50 μL of water, 10 μL of hydrochloric acid solution (1 M) and 300-μL of methanol were added. The mixture was briefly mixed and then centrifuged at 10000×
Selectivity was assessed by comparing chromatograms of six different batches of blank rat plasma with the corresponding spiked rat plasma. Linearity was assessed by weighted (1/
Male Sprague–Dawley rats weighing from 210 to 240 g were used for PK study. All animal experiments were performed in accordance with institutional guidelines and were approved by the Committee on Use and Care of Animals, Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese medicines. The aqueous solutions of guanxinsu were administrated to a rat by gavage at 2.41 g/kg (calculated as DSS). Serial blood samples (0.2 mL) were obtained at 0, 5, 20, 30, 45 min and 1, 2, 4, 8, 10, 12, 24 h after oral administration separately. During sampling, rats were anesthetized with ether. All samples were placed into heparinized tubes. After centrifugation at 4000×
The plasma concentration time profiles obtained from the experimental animals were analyzed by non-compartmental analysis. The maximum plasma concentration (Cmax) and the time-to-maximum concentration (Tmax) were obtained directly from raw data. The area under curve (AUC0-t) was calculated using the linear-trapezoidal rule, and the apparent elimination half-life (tl/2) was calculated from the relationship t1/2 =ln2/Ke, where Ke, represents the terminal elimination rate constant and was calculated by linear regression of the final log-linear part of the drug concentration time curve.
DSS had a carboxyl group in the molecular structure. It has a stronger mass response under the negative ionization mode than the positive mode. It was the same case for the hydrophilic compound
Various approaches were adopted to prepare the plasma samples using protein precipitation, liquid-liquid extraction (LLE), or solid phase extraction (SPE). Protein precipitants such as methanol and acetonitrile was used. It was found by comparison that the recovery and relative standard deviation of protein precipitation and LLE were better than those of SPE.
The matrix effects calculated were in the range of −7.1% to 4.5%, which was within the acceptable limits. Calibration curves were obtained between the mass responses and the plasma concentration over the range of 50–1,000 ng/mL for DDS. All correlation coefficients (
Stability results in
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Added | Found (mean) | Intra-day | Inter-day | |
100 | 105.2 | 4.5 | 5.3 | 5.2 |
500 | 539 | 5.9 | 3.8 | 7.8 |
900 | 944 | 6.0 | 4.2 | 4.9 |
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Added | Found | RSD(%) | RE(%) | |
Bench-top 2 h | 100 | 97 | 4.3 | -3 |
900 | 867.5 | 5.2 | -3.6 | |
Three freeze/thaw cycles | 100 | 108.3 | 3.8 | 8.3 |
900 | 965 | 5.7 | 7.2 | |
Auto sampler rack for 24 h °C | 100 | 94.5 | 6.2 | -5.5 |
900 | 943 | 4.9 | 4.8 | |
Freezing for 30 °C at -80 °C | 100 | 105.5 | 8.1 | 5.5 |
900 | 954 | 3.2 | 6.0 |
This validated method was successfully applied to PK studies of DSS following oral administration of guanxinsu solution to a Sprague–Dawley rat at 2.41 mg/kg (calculated as DSS), respectively. The typical plasma concentration–time profile of DSS is shown in
The maximum plasma concentration (Cmax) amounted to 442.12±43.65 ng/mL; the time to maximum plasma concentration (Tmax) was 0.85±0.15 h; and the half-life (t1/2) was 0.30±0.17h, while the area under the curve (AUC0-t) was 3334.19±76.84 ng.h/mL. The mean elimination rate constant(Ke)was 2.31 h-1. This shows that DDS mainly elimination in the body, belong to slow elimination process.
A sensitive, specific and rapid HPLC–MS/MS method was developed for the analysis of DSS in rat plasma. It is very convenient for the analysis of large numbers of samples containing DDS due to simple plasma pretreatment and short analysis time. The present method has been successfully applied to the PK study of DSS in the rat.
The national natural science fund projects(81060339)
This work was supported by the international science and technology cooperation program (2006DFB33080).