Development and validation of a high performance chromatographic method for determining sumatriptan in niosomes

In this paper, a novel, precise, specific, accurate and rapid reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatographic method was developed, optimized and validated for determining sumatriptan succinate in niosomes with the best chromatographic peak resolution, reduced run time and low cost of analysis. The formulation has been previously optimized in terms of composition and preparation technique to obtain a high drug encapsulation efficiency and adequate vesicle size distribution. This method showed the best resolution by using Spherisorb OSD2 C18 column (250 mm × 4.6 mm, 5 μm) using phosphate buffer (0.05 M):acetonitrile (80:20, v/v; pH adjusted to 6.0) as a mobile phase at a flow rate of 1 mL/min and wavelength of 214 nm. The main objective of this research was to demonstrate the robustness of the reversed-phase HPLC method development by applying the Taguchi robust methodology. The signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) was employed as a quality measurement. This tool permits to establish the influence of some selected factors (acetonitrile:phosphate ratio, pH buffer, oven temperature and flow rate) on two responses (peak areas and retention time). On the basis of the results obtained, we can conclude that this analytical method was robust for all the factors studies, as exception of the flow rate, where the higher quality was obtained for the fewer values (0.8 mL/min). Therefore, this parameter must be carefully controlled when this method was employed, to avoid any modification in the peak areas overall.