High sensitivity methods to quantify chloroquine and its metabolite in human blood samples using LC-MS/MS

Area of Science:

• Pharmacology
• Analytical Chemistry
• Clinical Diagnostics

Background:

• Chloroquine is a key antimalarial drug for Plasmodium vivax malaria.
• Accurate quantification of chloroquine and its metabolites in biological matrices is crucial for therapeutic drug monitoring and pharmacokinetic studies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate three high-throughput methods for quantifying chloroquine and its metabolite.
• To assess the suitability of these methods for routine analysis of clinical pharmacokinetic samples.

Main Methods:

• Development and validation of three distinct extraction techniques for chloroquine and metabolite recovery.
• Utilized liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) for sensitive and selective quantification.
• Employed high-throughput extraction from various blood matrices: whole blood, plasma, and dried blood spots.

Main Results:

• All developed methods demonstrated high sensitivity and selectivity.
• Intra- and inter-batch precision were consistently below 15%, meeting regulatory standards.
• Extraction techniques were simple, automatable, and efficient for small sample volumes.

Conclusions:

• The validated methods offer reliable and robust performance for chloroquine quantification.
• These assays are well-suited for high-throughput routine analysis in clinical pharmacokinetic studies.
• The developed methods support effective therapeutic drug monitoring in malaria treatment.