Eco-friendly RP-HPLC approach for simultaneously estimating the promising combination of pentoxifylline and simvastatin in therapeutic potential for breast cancer: Appraisal of greenness, whiteness, and Box–Behnken design

Abstract

Abstract Breast cancer affects millions of women worldwide. This study explores the potential of combining pentoxifylline (PTX) and simvastatin (SIM) as a treatment for breast cancer. We aimed to develop six sustainability tools using green and white metrics to evaluate the environmental impact of reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) methods for analyzing and separating PTX and SIM in their pure forms. The tools include analytical GREEnness, green analytical procedure index, Complexgreen analytical procedure index, analytical greenness metric for sample preparation, blue applicability grade index, and the RGB 12 algorithm. For the separation, we used a Novapack C8 column (15 × 0.46 cm, 5 µm) at 25°C. The injection volume was 5.0 µL, the wavelength was set to 210 nm, and the total runtime was 5 min. We identified optimal chromatographic conditions efficiently using the Box–Behnken design with minimal trials. We investigated the effects of three factors on retention time and resolution: acetonitrile ratio, pH, and flow rate. We used overlay plots with a 60:40 ratio (v/v) of acetonitrile and bi-distilled water to forecast the most effective mobile phase. The calibration curves for PTX and SIM showed a correlation value of over 0.999 within the range of 5–60 µg·mL−1. The recovery rates ranged from 99.9% to 100.2%, indicating high accuracy. Our RP-HPLC technique proves to be reliable and efficient for the simultaneous estimation of multiple anticancer drugs. We evaluated the environmental sustainability of this approach using green and white metrics, and the recommended method has been thoroughly validated according to International Council for Harmonisation guidelines, making it highly reliable for analyzing new formulations.