Simultaneous determination of amino acid and monoamine neurotransmitters in PC12 cells and rats models of Parkinson’s disease using a sensitizing derivatization reagent by UHPLC–MS/MS

• 10-Ethyl-acridone-3-sulfonyl chloride was reported as a MS sensitizing reagent.
• Amino acid and monoamine neurotransmitters were determined in a single run.
• This method exhibited rapidness, ease of handling, and high sensitivity.
• EASC derivatization improved LC retention times and MS detection sensitivities.
• An evaluation tool for Parkinson’s disease and related studies was developed.

Multi-analytes simultaneous monitoring of amino acid and monoamine neurotransmitters (NTs) has important scientific significance for their related pathology, physiology and drug screening. In this work, in virtue of a mass spectrometry sensitizing reagent 10-ethyl-acridone-3-sulfonyl chloride (EASC) as derivatization reagent, an Ultra High Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry (UHPLC–MS/MS) method was developed and validated for simultaneous determination of six amino acid NTs, two monoamine ones and its one metabolite. The simple and rapid derivatization reaction was innovatively combined with plasma preparation by using EASC acetonitrile solution as protein precipitant. This interesting combination brought the advantages of speediness, simpleness and high-throughput in a cost-effective way. Under the optimized conditions, LODs (0.004–3.80 nM) and LOQs (0.014–13.3 nM) of EASC derivatized-NTs were calculated and found to be significantly lower than those of direct UHPLC–MS/MS detection about 11.5–275.0 and 14.4–371.4 times, respectively. Moreover, EASC derivatization significantly improved chromatographic resolution and matrix effect when compared with direct UPLC–MS/MS detection method without derivatization. Meanwhile, it also brought acceptable precision (3.0–13.0%, peak area CVs%), accuracy (86.4–112.9%), recovery (88.3–107.8%) and stability (3.8–8.5%, peak area CVs%) results. This method was successfully applied for the antiparkinsonian effect evaluation of levodopa and Ginsenoside Rg1 using PC12 cells and rats models by measuring multiple NTs. This provided a new method for the NTs related studies in the future.

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