Quantitative HPLC-UV method for the determination of firocoxib from horse and dog plasma

A sensitive reversed-phase HPLC-UV method was developed for the determination of firocoxib, a novel and highly selective COX-2 inhibitor, in plasma. A 1.0 mL dog or horse plasma sample is mixed with water and passed through a hydrophobic-lipophilic copolymer solid-phase extraction column to isolate firocoxib. Quantitation is based on an external standard curve. The method has a validated limit of quantitation of 25 ng/mL and a limit of detection of 10 ng/mL. The validated upper limit of quantitation was 2500 ng/mL for horses and 10,000 ng/mL for dogs. The average recoveries ranged from 88-93% for horse plasma and 96-103% for dog plasma. The coefficient of variation in all cases was less than 10%. This method is suitable for the analysis of clinical samples from pharmacokinetic and bioequivalence studies and drug monitoring.