Analysis of prasugrel active metabolite R-138727 in human plasma: a sensitive, highly selective and fast LC-MS/MS...

A cost effective, sensitive, simple, and rapid high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method was developed and validated for the quantification of the prasugrel metabolite in human plasma. Following solid phase extraction, the analyte (prasugrel active metabolite; R-138727) and internal standard (emtricitabine) were separated using a mobile phase in an isocratic elution mode on a reverse phase C18 column and were analyzed by an LC-MS/MS in the multiple reaction monitoring mode using the respective [M+H](+) ions, m/z 498.3-206.0 for R-138727 and m/z 248.2-130.1 for the internal standard. The assay exhibited a linear dynamic range of 0.2-120 ng/mL. The lower limit of quantification was 0.2 ng/mL with a relative standard deviation of 5.0%. This LC-MS/MS method was validated with intra-batch and inter-batch precision and accuracy. Results for precision and accuracy are in range of 3.9-9.6% and 95.2-102.2% respectively. This validated method is simple and repeatable to use in bioequivalence/pharmacokinetic studies.