Photostability study of agomelatine using UHPLC-DAD-MS/MS method. Kinetics,identification of the transformation products and in silico evaluation of toxicity

Photostability of an antidepressant agomelatine under the simulated solar radiation was studied. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of this process was performed with the use of UHPLC-DAD system coupled with a high resolution hybrid ESI-Q-TOF mass spectrometer. In contrast to the foregoing studies agomelatine turned out to be relatively photolabile compound. During the experiment six transformation products were formed, and their structures were elucidated on the basis of MS/MS fragmentation spectra. Four of these photoproducts were found to be a result of aromatic and aliphatic hydroxylation. Additionally, identified products were submitted to the in silico toxicity evaluation, which showed that some of them could be more mutagenic or toxic to rodents than the parent compound.