Speciation of cisplatin in environmental water samples by hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography coupled to inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

•We developed ZIC-HILIC−ICP–MS procedure for speciation of cisplatin.•Hydrolysis of cisplatin was studied in water and solutions containing chloride ions.•A method developed is repeatable, sensitive and selective.•LODs for cisplatin and its hydrolysed complexes ranged from 0.03 to 0.17 ng Pt/mL.•The procedure enabled speciation of cisplatin in spiked hospital wastewaters.

Cisplatin is still widely used for treatment of numerous types of tumours. Different speciation methods have been applied to study behaviour of the intact drug and its individual biotransformation species in various clinical samples. These methods are mainly based on electrophoresis, size exclusion (SEC) or ion chromatography (IC) techniques coupled to inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP–MS). Hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC), which is a common technique for separation of polar substances, was rarely applied for separation of cisplatin and its hydrolysed metabolites. There is also a lack of information available on the occurrence of cisplatin and its hydrolysed complexes in the environmental waters. In the present study the concentrations of Pt were determined in hospital wastewaters by ICP–MS. A procedure for separation of cisplatin and its aqueous hydrolysed complexes by the use of HILIC column was optimized. Quantification of separated Pt species was performed by isotope dilution (ID)–ICP–MS procedure. Low limits of detection (LODs) and quantification (LOQs) were obtained for cisplatin and its hydrolysed complexes ranging from 0.0273 to 0.1726 ng Pt/mL and from 0.0909 to 0.5753 ng Pt/mL, respectively. Good repeatability of the procedure with relative standard deviation (RSD) lower than ±2.3% was obtained. The column recoveries, which ranged from 95 to 101%, indicated that the procedure developed enabled quantitative speciation analysis of aqueous cisplatin complexes. The ZIC-HILIC–ID–ICP–MS procedure was successfully applied in speciation of cisplatin in spiked hospital wastewater samples.

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