Rapid development of analytical method for antiepileptic drugs in plasma using UHPLC method scouting system coupled to LC/MS/MS

Method development for therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) is indispensable for managing drug dosage based on the drug concentration in blood in order to conduct a rational and efficient drug therapy. Liquid chromatography coupled with tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry is increasingly used in TDM because it can perform selective and sensitive analysis by simple sample pretreatment. The UHPLC method scouting system coupled to tandem quadrupole mass spectrometer used in this study can dramatically shorten the total time for optimization of analytical conditions because this system can make enormous combinatorial analysis methods and run batch program automatically. In this study, we developed a high-speed and sensitive method for measurement of seventeen antiepileptics in plasma by UHPLC coupled with tandem quadrupole mass spectrometer.