Quantitation Of Drug Metabolites Research Articles

Bifunctionalized isotopologs as calibrants for standard-free quantitation of drug metabolites in plasma by liquid chromatography coupled with radiometry and mass spectrometry.

The reported method involves a novel workflow that eliminates the need for authentic reference standards for the quantitation of drug metabolites in biological samples using a single multi-isotopically labeled compound bearing both radio and stable isotopes. The resulting radio and stable bifunctionalized isotopolog (RADSTIL) of the parent drug is employed as a substrate for in vitro biotransformation to targeted RADSTILs of metabolites as calibrants. Inclusion of a radio label enables both radiometric and mass spectrometric detection. The addition of stable labels ensures the subsequent isotopic interference-free quantitation of unlabeled metabolites in preclinical and clinical samples. This affords a more accurate quantitation workflow compared with the current semi-quantitation method, which utilizes isotopic interfering radio isotopologs of metabolites alone as calibrants. The proof-of-concept is illustrated with (14 C,13 C2 )-acetaminophen where in vitro biotransformation produced (14 C,13 C2 )-sulfate and (14 C,13 C2 )-glucuronide calibrants. Absolute quantitation of the acetaminophen metabolites was then achieved by liquid chromatography coupled with radiometry and mass spectrometry. Quantitative data obtained by this method fell within 82-86% of the values from conventional LC-MS/MS method.

Development of rapid methodologies for the isolation and quantitation of drug metabolites by differential mobility spectrometry – mass spectrometry

Clinical and forensic toxicology laboratories are inundated with thousands of samples requiring lengthy chromatographic separations prior to mass spectrometry. Here, we employ differential mobility spectrometry (DMS) interfaced to nano-electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry to provide a rapid ion filtration technique for the separation of ions in gas phase media prior to mass spectral analysis on a DMS-integrated AB SCIEX API 3000 triple-quadrupole mass spectrometer. DMS is efficient at the rapid separation of ions under ambient conditions and provides many advantages when used as an ion filtration technique in tandem with mass spectrometry (MS) and MS/MS. Our studies evaluated DMS-MS/MS as a rapid, quantitative platform for the analysis of drug metabolites isolated from urine samples. In targeted applications, five metabolites of common drugs of abuse were effectively and rapidly separated using isopropanol and ethyl acetate as transport gas modifiers, eliminating the gas chromatography or liquid chromatography-based separations commonly employed in clinical and forensic toxicology laboratories. Calibration curves were prepared for the selected drug metabolites utilizing deuterated internal standards for quantitative purposes. The feasibility of separating and quantitating drug metabolites in a rapid fashion was evaluated by compensation voltage stepping followed by multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) detection. Rapid profiling of clinical and forensic toxicology samples could help to address an urgent need within the scientific community by developing high-throughput analytical methodologies, which could reduce significant case backlogs present within these laboratories.

Prediction of In Vivo Enantiomeric Compositions by Modeling In Vitro Metabolic Profiles

Identification and quantitation of drug metabolites are important for understanding and predicting drug-drug interactions and toxicities. For chiral compounds, metabolic interconversion of enantiomers may present unique challenges. If the stereoisomers are biologically distinguishable, regulatory agencies consider them distinct chemical entities and require individual characterization since enantiomers may exhibit different pharmacokinetic, pharmacologic, and toxicologic properties. Efforts to predict enantiomeric ratios in humans from animal studies are frequently hampered by a lack of understanding of the enzymes responsible and potential interspecies differences. In this study, liver microsomes from rats, dogs, and monkeys were used to investigate the kinetics of interconversion of two enantiomeric secondary alcohols (Compounds A and C) via oxidation to a ketone intermediate (Compound B) and subsequent reduction of the ketone to either regenerate the starting alcohol, or produce the enantiomer. A mechanistic model was established using in vitro microsomal data to predict the ratios of the enantiomer concentrations in plasma 24 hours after dosing and the ratios of AUC values for the enantiomers. Plasma concentrations of the enantiomers and ketone intermediate were determined after single intravenous and oral doses of Compound C. The observed concentration and AUC ratios were similar to the values predicted by the mechanistic model.

Quantitation of drug metabolites in the absence of pure metabolite standards by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with a chemiluminescence nitrogen detector and mass spectrometer.

Quantitative information on drug metabolites with pharmacological or toxicological activities is of great interest during the drug discovery and development process. Because the analyte response with mass spectrometry can change significantly due to small variations in chemical structure, pure standards are required to construct standard curves for quantitation. However, for most programs at the discovery stage, pure metabolite standards are not available. In this work, an evaluation was conducted using a chemiluminescent nitrogen detector (CLND) as a calibrator to obtain the response factor ratio on a mass spectrometer generated from a metabolite and its parent compound in biological fluids. Using the response factor ratio obtained from the CLND, the metabolite could be quantified with the liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) response obtained from the parent drug's standard curve. For this evaluation, oxazepam and temazepam were chosen as a 'drug/metabolite' pair. Temazepam was treated as the methylated metabolite of oxazepam. A spiked dog urine sample with a known concentration of oxazepam and unknown concentration of temazepam was injected onto the HPLC system and detected by both the CLND and MS/MS. Taking advantage of the equimolar response feature of the CLND, a response factor ratio between temazepam and oxazepam on the mass spectrometer was obtained by comparing the peak areas generated on the CLND and the mass spectrometer. From this ratio, temazepam was quantified using the oxazepam standard curve. The difference between the concentration of temazepam obtained from the reconstructed standard curve and the concentration obtained directly from a real temazepam standard curve was within 13% except the least concentrated standard (31%). This methodology has been successfully applied to measure quantities of the metabolite of a proprietary compound in a dog pharmacokinetic (PK) study.

Liquid chromatography/atmospheric pressure ionization-mass spectrometry in drug metabolism studies.

The study of the metabolic fate of drugs is an essential and important part of the drug development process. The analysis of metabolites is a challenging task and several different analytical methods have been used in these studies. However, after the introduction of the atmospheric pressure ionization (API) technique, electrospray and atmospheric pressure chemical ionization, liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) has become an important and widely used method in the analysis of metabolites owing to its superior specificity, sensitivity and efficiency. In this paper the feasibility of LC/API-MS techniques in the identification, structure characterization and quantitation of drug metabolites is reviewed. Sample preparation, LC techniques, isotope labeling, suitability of different MS techniques, such as tandem mass spectrometry, and high-resolution MS in drug metabolite analysis, are summarized and discussed. Automation of data acquisition and interpretation, special techniques and possible future trends are also the topics of the review.