Parallel artificial liquid membrane extraction: micro-scale liquid-liquid-liquid extraction in the 96-well format.

Area of Science:

• Analytical Chemistry
• Biochemistry

Background:

• A novel approach, parallel artificial liquid membrane extraction (PALME), is introduced for analytical liquid-liquid-liquid membrane extraction.
• PALME utilizes a sandwich design with donor and acceptor plates separated by artificial liquid membranes, adapting hollow-fiber liquid-phase microextraction to a 96-well plate format.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a new parallel artificial liquid membrane extraction technique for the analysis of basic drugs in human plasma.
• To assess the efficiency, sensitivity, and linearity of the PALME method using LC-MS/MS.

Main Methods:

• Development of a parallel artificial liquid membrane extraction setup in a 96-well plate format.
• Extraction of four basic drugs (pethidine, nortriptyline, methadone, haloperidol) from human plasma samples.
• Analysis of extracted drugs using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS).

Main Results:

• Successful extraction of four basic drugs from human plasma within 30 minutes.
• Extraction recoveries ranged from 34% to 74% for the model analytes.
• Achieved low limits of quantification (LOQs) between 0.01-0.35 ng/ml, with linearity (R² > 0.9955) and relative standard deviation (RSD) values below 12%.

Conclusions:

• Liquid-liquid-liquid membrane extraction was successfully implemented using a modified 96-well plate format.
• The parallel artificial liquid membrane extraction method provides a viable and efficient approach for drug analysis in biological matrices.
• The developed method demonstrates good performance characteristics for the quantitative analysis of basic drugs in human plasma.