A high pH based reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatographic method for the analysis of aminoglycoside plazomicin and its impurities

A reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatographic (RP-HPLC) method has been developed for the aminoglycoside (AG) plazomicin (ACHN-490). This method employed a high pH mobile phase (pH > 11) with a gradient of 0.25 M ammonium hydroxide in water and acetonitrile, an XBridge C18 column and UV detection at 210 nm. Although the molar UV absorption of plazomicin is weak, the high pH conditions of this method allow for higher loadings, which compensates for the inherent low UV sensitivity. Under these high pH conditions, impurities and degradants were base line separated from plazomicin. The mobile phases used for this method allowed for on-line mass detection for the impurities and degradants.The RP-HPLC method has been validated in terms of specificity, linearity and range, accuracy, and precision. The analytical method met specificity requirements of a homogenous peak with no interferences from the blank or from the known impurities in plazomicin. The linearity of the method for the plazomicin impurity determination was excellent, with a coefficient of determination (r2) of 0.9993, over the freebase (FB) concentration range of 0.0025–3.0 mg/mL. The method is capable of detecting impurities down to 0.1% of the peak area of plazomicin. A single point standard at a concentration of 1.0 mg/mL FB was validated over the range of 50–150% for quantitation of the freebase content (the assay) in bulk drug substance. The mean recoveries of FB are in the range 98.6–102.0% with a mean RSD (relative standard deviation) <1.0%. The study also examined the method precision for purity, impurities and the assay with two instruments on two different days. The method showed adequate accuracy and precision for the intended use. This high pH method was successfully used to determine the impurity and measure the drug content in the final plazomicin drug substance. In addition, the method with an on-line mass spectrometry detector has been used to characterize the structures of the impurities in plazomicin.