Abstract

A REVIEW ON QUANTIFICATION OF AN ANTICANCER DRUG- IMATINIB BY LIQUID CHROMATOGRAPHY COUPLED TO MASS SPECTROMETRY (LC-MS) TECHNIQUE

Hafiz A. Makeen, Mohammed Al-Bratty*, Md Shamsher Alam

ABSTRACT

Imatinib mesylate is used in treating chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) and a number of other malignancies. It is the first member of a new class of agents that act by inhibiting particular tyrosine kinase enzymes, instead of non-specifically inhibiting rapidly dividing cells. Therapies with imatinib have shown significant inter-individual variability in pharmacokinetics, demanding a need for Therapeutic Drug Monitoring (TDM) in order to achieve an optimal response in CML therapy and to minimize adverse side effects. LC-MS has widely been applied as a reliable technique for quantification of imatinib in human plasma. The linearity of the LC-MS method was evaluated over the imatinib concentration range of 30 – 10000 ng/mL in human plasma with correlation coefficient (R2) of ≥ 0.999. The recoveries determined at low, medium and high concentration levels varied from 95 – 107 % and within the acceptable limits. Validated method has proved to be linear, accurate, precise, and robust, it is suitable for pharmacokinetic assays, such as bioavailability and bioequivalence, and is being successfully applied in routine therapeutic drug monitoring in the hospital service.

Keywords: Imatinib, Liquid Chromatography, Plasma, LC-MS/MS, Fragmentation.