Liquid chromatographic–tandem mass spectrometry assay for quantitation of a novel antidiabetic S002‐853 in rat plasma and its application to pharmacokinetic study

A sensitive and selective LC‐MS/MS method has been developed and validated for the estimation of novel antidiabetic synthetic flavonoid S002‐853 in rat plasma using centchroman as an internal standard. The method involves a simple two‐step liquid–liquid extraction with diethyl ether. The analyte was chromatographed on a Pierce Spheri‐5, guard cyano column (30 × 4.6 mm i.d., 5 µm) with isocratic mobile phase consisting of methanol–ammonium acetate buffer (pH 4.6, 10 mm ; 90 : 10, v/v) at a flow rate of 0.75 mL/min. The API 4000 triple‐quadrupole LC–MS/MS system was operated under multiple reaction‐monitoring mode. The ionization was performed by electrospray ionization technique in positive ion mode. The chromatographic run time was 6 min and the weighted (1/x²) calibration curves were linear over the range 0.78–400 ng/mL. The limit of detection and lower limit of quantification were 0.195 and 0.78 ng/mL, respectively. The intra‐ and inter‐batch accuracy (%bias) and precision (%RSD) were found to be less than 8.47 and 11.6% respectively. The average absolute recoveries of S002‐853 and internal standard from spiked plasma samples were >90%. S002‐853 was stable for 8 h at ambient temperature, 4 weeks at ?60°C and after three freeze–thaw cycles. The assay was successfully applied to determine the pharmacokinetic parameters in male Sprague–Dawley rats after an oral dose administration at 25 mg/kg. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.