Identification and characterization of stress degradation products of ibrutinib by LC-UV/PDA and LC-Q/TOF-MS studies

The anticancer drug ibrutinib was subjected to stress degradation studies under the ICH-prescribed hydrolytic, photolytic, oxidative and thermal stress conditions, and its degradation behavior was studied. A significant degradation was noted for the drug under acidic/alkaline hydrolytic, acid/alkaline photolytic, and oxidative conditions. The UPLC-UV/PDA studies revealed the generation of six degradation products (I-VI), and these were adequately resolved from the drug under the developed chromatographic conditions over a Kinetex® C18 (100 mm×4.6 mm; 2.6 μm) column employing isocratic elution method. Detection wavelength was selected as 289 nm. The UPLC-UV/PDA method conditions were extrapolated to UPLC-MS/TOF studies. All the six degradation products were found to be ionized in the total ion chromatogram, and the products could be identified and characterized from their mass spectral data. The possible degradation route of ibrutinib leading to generation of various products was also postulated.