Simultaneous Determination of Doxifluridine and 5-FU in Liver and Intestine Tissue Using LC/MS/MS

A liquid chromatographic method with tandom spectrometric detection (LC/MS/MS) for the simultaneous determination of doxifluridine and its active metabolite, 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) was developed over the concentration range of $5{\sim}2000$ ng/ml, respectively. Doxifluridine, 5-FU and internal standard, 5-chlorouracil (5-CU), were extracted from liver and intestine tissue via protein precipitation. Acetonitrile was used as the extraction solvent and the supernatant was evaporated and reconstructed in mobile phase. Optimum chromatographic separation was achieved on a Agilent Zorbax $C_{18}$ ($100\;mm{\times}2.1\;mm$, $3.5\;{\mu}m$) column with mobile phase run in isocratic with methanol : water (20 : 80, v/v). The flow rate was 0.2 ml/min with total cycle time of 5 min. The lower limit of quantification was validated at 5.0 ng/ml of liver and intestine tissue, for both doxifluridine and 5-FU, respectively. The intra-day and inter-day precision and accuracy of quality control (QC) samples were <11% coefficient of variation and <7% relative error from theoretical concentration for both analytes. In addition, the special designed stability study was performed, because the metabolism of doxifluridine occurs spontaneously even in ice bath for monkey liver. The stability of doxifluridine in liver and intestine of monkey and beagle dog was compared. It was found that bioanalytical validation could not be performed for the monkey liver; however, beagle dog's liver has relatively low speed of metabolism compared to monkey liver and instead of monkey liver, beagle dog's liver could be used for the validation. Bioanalytical validation could be performed in monkey intestine. Eventually, this developed method for liver and intestine will be useful in support of the toxicokinetic and pharmacokinetic studies of doxifluridine and 5-FU.

LC/MS/MS를 이용한 원숭이 및 비글견의 간 및 장관 조직에서의 Doxifluridine과 대사체 5-FU 동시분석법 개발