High-Sensitivity Analysis of Drugs in Ultra-Small Volume Plasma Samples Using Microflow LC/MS/MS

Introduction

It is known that drugs and other xenobiotics are generally subject to metabolism in the body, which facilitates their detoxification and elimination from the body. Therefore, pharmacokinetic (PK) studies of the metabolic fate of drugs in the body are conducted by preclinical and clinical tests as part of the drug development process. In preclinical PK studies, the concentration of drugs and their metabolites in biological samples obtained from animal experiments is analyzed by LC/MS/MS. However, since the size of the animal model generally limits the amount of sample volume that can be taken safely, a large number of animals and a significant volume of drug may be necessary for the evaluation, and this becomes an issue from the ethical and economic point of view. An effective approach to overcome those issues, together with the use of micro sampling technology, is the development of high sensitivity LC MS/MS methods that allows drug detection from the small amount of sample. This article introduces an example of a high-sensitivity microflow LC/MS/MS method, for the analysis of drugs in ultrasmall volume plasma samples.

October 21, 2020 GMT