Strategy for identification of leachables in packaged pharmaceutical liquid formulations

Drug stability is one of the key properties to be monitored in pharmaceutical drug development. Drug degradation products, impurities and/or leachables from the drug product and packages may have significant impacts on drug efficacy, safety profile and storage conditions. In the registration stability samples of an ophthalmic pharmaceutical drug product, an unknown compound was found at a level of 0.19% by HPLC analysis. Subsequent liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) analysis with electrospray ionization (ESI) indicated that the unknown was not related to the drug substance and was most likely a leachable. Identification of this unknown leachable was needed to evaluate the impact on drug safety. Through systematic extraction of various components or component combination of the packaging materials, and subsequently LC/MS analysis, the unknown was found to be a leachable coming from the varnish applied to the label. In general, using LC/MS alone is not sufficient to elucidate the structure of a complete unknown. Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) was then conducted with a chemical ionization (CI) source to determine the retention time and mass of the compound of interest. Both CI and ESI sources generated the same protonated molecular ion [M+H] and similar fragmentation ions, which provides a good correlation of the unknown eluted in the liquid chromatogram and in the gas chromatogram. GC/MS with electron impact (EI) was then conducted to obtain the EI mass spectrum of this unknown. It was identified as monomethyl derivative of mephenesin through the NIST library search. The identification strategy utilized electrospray LC/MS and GC/MS with chemical and electron ionization sources which provided complimentary information for structure elucidation of this unknown compound. This combination approach in conjunction with systematic extraction was necessary for the determination of the source of this unknown in the pharmaceutical drug stability studies.