Simultaneous Determination of Bosentan, Glimepiride, HYBOS and M1 in Rat Plasma by UPLC–MS-MS and its Application to Pharmacokinetic Study

A rapid and sensitive ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS-MS) method for the simultaneous determination of bosentan (BOS), glimepiride (GLP), hydroxyl bosentan (HYBOS) and hydroxyl glimepiride (M1) in rat plasma using one-step protein precipitation was developed and validated. After addition of ambrisentan as an internal standard (IS), protein precipitation by acetonitrile was used in sample preparation. Chromatographic separation was achieved on a Waters ACQUITY UPLC BEH C18 column (2.1 mm × 100 mm, 1.7 μm particle size, Waters Corp., Milford, MA, USA) and inline 0.2 μm stainless steel frit filter (Waters Corp.) with acetonitrile-0.1% formic acid as the mobile phase at a flow rate of 0.4 mL/min with gradient elution. The column temperature was maintained at 40°C. Only 4 min was needed for an analytical run. The retention times were ∼3.29 min for BOS, 3.56 min for GLP, 1.42 min for HYBOS, 1.53 min for M1 and 3.22 min for IS. Electrospray ionization source was employed and operated in positive-ion mode; multiple reaction monitoring mode was applied to target fragment ions m/z 552 → 202, m/z 568 → 202, m/z 491 → 352, m/z 507 → 352 and m/z 379 → 347 for BOS, HYBOS, GLP, M1 and IS, respectively. The assay was validated over concentration ranges of 25-5,000 ng/mL (r(2) = 0.9984) for BOS, 1-200 ng/mL (r(2) = 0.9999) for GLP, 0.5-100 ng/mL (r(2) = 0.9999) for HYBOS and 0.1-20 ng/mL (r(2) = 0.9984) for M1. Intra- and interday precision values for replicate quality control samples were within 14.2% for all analytes during the assay validation. Mean quality control accuracy values were within -3.3 to 14.4% of nominal values for all analytes. The mean recoveries of BOS, GLP, HYBOS, M1 and ambrisentan from the plasma exceeded 90.4%. The analytes were stable in rat plasma for at least 2 h at room temperature, 30 days at -40°C and following at least three freeze-thaw cycles (-40°C to room temperature). This method was successfully applied to a pharmacokinetic study of coadministeration of BOS and GLP in rats.