Journal of Analytical & Bioanalytical Techniques
Open Access

Abstract

Piperaquine (PQ) is an antimalarial drug used for artemisinin-based combination antimalarial therapy and under study for malaria chemoprevention. Here we present a highly sensitive LC-MS/MS method for quantitation of PQ that requires only 25 μL human plasma, and a method to quantify PQ in dried blood spots (DBS) with a 3-mm ID. Plasma samples were precipitated with 5% trichloroacetic acid in methanol-water (1:1 v/v), and DBS were extracted with 0.5% formic acid in acetonitrile-water (1:9 v/v). Deuterated PQ (PQ-d6) was used as the internal standard (IS). Separation was achieved on a PFP column (50 x 2.1 mm, 3 μ m, Agilent Tech. Inc.) eluted with water containing 20 mM ammonium formate, 0.14% trifluoroacetic acid (pH 2.96), and acetonitrile containing 0.1% trifluoroacetic acid in a gradient mode at a flow rate of 0.5 mL/min. Atmospheric pressure chemical ionization in positive mode (APCI+) and multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) were used for detection. Ion pairs 535/288 for PQ and 541/294 for the IS were selected for quantification, and 535/260 for PQ was used for confirmation. The retention times were typically 1.09 min for PQ and 1.08 min for the IS. Total run time was 3.0 min per sample. The calibration range was 1.5-250 ng/mL for plasma samples and 2.5-100 ng/mL for DBS samples. The methods were applied to plasma and DBS samples collected simultaneously from children. Correlation analysis suggests that improvement of DBS sample collection method is required.

Biography

Liusheng Huang has completed his PhD from Wayne State University (Detroit, MI, USA) and postdoctoral studies from School of Pharmacy, University of California at San Francisco. He is a Research Scientist in Drug Research Unit, School of Pharmacy at UCSF, a bioanalytical and pharmacology core facility for AIDS Clinical Trials group network sponsored by US NIH. He has published more than 20 papers in reputed journals and has been serving as a reviewer for multiple journals including Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis, Bioanalysis, Journal of Chromatography B. PLOS ONE, and J. Bioequivalence & Bioavailability