Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method for determination of phencynonate in rat blood and urine

A sensitive and specific high-performance liquid chromatographic assay with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry detection (LC-ESI-MS) has been developed and validated for the identification and quantification of the novel anticholinergic drug phencynonate in rat blood and urine. The sample pretreatment involves basification and iterative liquid-liquid extraction with ethyl ether-dichloromethane (2:1, v/v) solution, followed by LC separation and positive electrospray ionization mass spectrometry detection. The chromatography was on BetaBasic-18 column (150 mm × 2.1 mm i.d., 3 μm). The mobile phase was composed of methanol-water (85:15, v/v), containing 0.5‰ formic acid, which was pumped at a flow-rate of 0.2 ml/min. Thiencynonate was selected as the internal standard (IS). Simultaneous MS detection of phencynonate and IS was performed at m/z 358.4 (phencynonate), m/z 364 (thiencynonate), and the selected reaction ion monitoring (SRM) of the two compounds was at 156. Phencynonate eluted at approximately 5.25 min, thiencynonate eluted at approximately 5.10 min and no endogenous materials interfered with their measurement. Linearity was obtained over the concentration range of 1-100 ng/ml in rat blood and 1-500 ng/ml in rat urine. The lower limit of quantification (LLOQ) was reproducible at 1 ng/ml in both of rat blood and urine. The precision measured was obtained from 2.92 to 9.76% in rat blood and 4.17 to 9.76% in rat urine. Extraction recoveries were in the range of 69.57-79.49% in blood and 56.85-64.86% in urine. This method was successfully applied to the identification and quantification of phencynonate in pharmacokinetic studies.