Experimental design approach for the optimisation of a HPLC-fluorimetric method for the quantitation of the angiotensin II receptor antagonist telmisartan in urine

Improved Understanding of the High Shear Wet Granulation Process under the Paradigm of Quality by Design Using Salvia miltiorrhiza Granules

BACKGROUND

High shear wet granulation (HSWG) is a shaping process for granulation that has been enhanced for application in the pharmaceutical industry. However, study of HSWG is complex and challenging due to the relatively poor understanding of HSWG, especially for sticky powder-like herbal extracts.

AIM

In this study, we used Salvia miltiorrhiza granules to investigate the HSWG process across different scales using quality by design (QbD) approaches.

METHODS

A Plackett-Burman experimental design was used to screen nine granulation factors in the HSWG process. Moreover, a quadratic polynomial regression model was established based on a Box-Behnken experimental design to optimize the granulation factors. In addition, the scale-up of HSWG was implemented based on a nucleation regime map approach.

RESULTS

According to the Plackett-Burman experimental design, it was found that three granulation factors, including salvia ratio, binder amount, and chopper speed, significantly affected the granule size (D50) of S. miltiorrhiza in HSWG. Furthermore, the results of the Box-Behnken experimental design and validation experiment showed that the model successfully captured the quadratic polynomial relationship between granule size and the two granulation factors of salvia ratio and binder amount. At the same experiment points, granules at all scales had similar size distribution, surface morphology, and flow properties.

CONCLUSIONS

These results demonstrated that rational design, screening, optimization, and scale-up of HSWG are feasible using QbD approaches. This study provides a better understanding of HSWG process under the paradigm of QbD using S. miltiorrhiza granules.

Quality by Design-Applied Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry Determination of Enzalutamide Anti-Prostate Cancer Therapy Drug in Spiked Plasma Samples

This research article presents the Quality by Design (QbD)–finalised conditions for a method that uses liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry for the determination of concentration of enzalutamide (ENZ), an atypical anticancer drug, in a drug formulation and in spiked plasma samples. Critical process attributes (CPA) considered to be the influential parameters in separation, identification, and quantification processes by ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionisation-tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-ESI-MS/MS) were organic content, buffer strength, pH modifier, flow rate, spray voltage, sheath gas, and auxiliary gas that alter critical analytical attributes, such as retention time (R1) and area (R2). These factors were evaluated first in a factorial design (Taguchi orthogonal array design) and then extensively in a central composite design (CCD) to zero-in on the mobile phase for the quantification of ENZ standard drug and along with its internal standard (ENZIS) in spiked plasma samples and in formulation. Pareto chart from initial factorial design (Taguchi orthogonal array design) model suggested which of the CPA factors should be given the weightage, that is, to be exhaustively analysed in the CCD and response surface analysis. The elaborated parameters proposed by World Health Organization were studied by method validation, ie, selectivity, linearity, accuracy, precision repeatability system-suitability tests, method robustness/ruggedness, sensitivity, and stability. The strategy followed gives an insight on the development of a robust QbD-compliant quantitative UHPLC-ESI-MS/MS method for ENZ drug containing plasma samples (spiked).

Telmisartan

Telmisartan is an angiotensin-II receptor antagonist (ARB) used in the treatment of hypertension. Generally, angiotensin-II receptor blockers such as telmisartan bind to the angiotensin-II type 1 receptors with high affinity, causing inhibition of the action of angiotensin II on vascular smooth muscle, ultimately leading to a reduction in arterial blood pressure. The present study gives a comprehensive profile of telmisartan, including detailed nomenclature, formulae, elemental analysis, and appearance of the drug are mentioned. The uses and applications and the several methods described for its preparation of the drug are outlined. The profile contains the physicochemical properties including: pKa value, solubility, X-ray powder diffraction, melting point, and methods of analysis (including compendial, electrochemical, spectroscopic, and chromatographic methods of analysis). Developed validated stability-indicating (HPLC and biodiffusion assay methods under accelerated acidic, alkaline, and oxidative conditions, in addition to effect of different types of light, temperature, and pH. Detailed Pharmacology also presented (Pharmacological actions, Therapeutic uses and Dosing, Interactions, and adverse effects and precautions). More than 80 references were given as a proof of the above-mentioned studies.

Analysis of Sartans: a review

The risk of cardiovascular diseases is closely related to hypertension, high cholesterol levels, and diabetes. When these risk factors appear together they are referred to as a metabolic syndrome. In the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, a combination of antihypertensive, hypolipemiant, and antidiabetic drugs is often applied. Diuretics (chlortalidone, hydrochlorothiazide, etc.) and angiotensin II receptors antagonist (sartans) are used to control hypertension, whereas statins (fluvastatin, simvastatin, etc.) are used to reduce cholesterol levels. This review is concerned with methods for the analysis of sartans in various matrices, such as pharmaceutical formulations, environmental and biological samples, and discusses the current status of stability studies of sartans . It also presents analytical methods for the simultaneous determination of sartans, diuretics, and statins.

A fluorescence study on the interaction of telmisartan in triblock polymers pluronic P123 and F127

Telmisartan is a poorly soluble drug used in treatment of hypertension. There is a recent interest to use pluronic for improving the solubility and bioavailability of these drugs. In this study the interaction of telmisartan with P123 and F127 has been carried out using steady state and time dependent fluorescence study. Quenching of telmisartan fluorescence by potassium iodide is controlled by interactions arising from collisions and complex formation. A comparison of the fluorescence of telmisartan in pluronics with the well understood fluorescence of 8-anilino-1-naphthalene-sulfonic acid, a known fluorescent molecular probe, indicates that telmisartan is generally present in a relatively polar microenvironment with restricted diffusive motion.

Molecularly imprinted SPE combined with dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction for selective analysis of telmisartan in biological and formulation samples

Background: The present communication describes the combination of molecularly imprinted SPE and dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction for the selective preconcentration and determination of telmisartan (TEL) in rat urine, plasma and pharmaceutical formulation by HPLC. Results: Various factors that can affect the extraction efficiency of molecularly imprinted SPE and dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction were optimized. The LOD and LOQ were found to be 0.19 and 0.63 µg ml-1 in urine, while in plasma it was found to be 0.28 and 0.87 µg ml-1, respectively. The percentage recovery of TEL in different matrices was found to be in the range of 81–97%. Conclusion: The proposed method may find wide applications in clinical, toxicological and QC laboratories for the routine analysis of TEL.

Novel and validated titrimetric method for determination of selected angiotensin-II-receptor antagonists in pharmaceutical preparations and its comparison with UV spectrophotometric determination

A novel and simple titrimetric method for determination of commonly used angiotensin-II-receptor antagonists (ARA-IIs) is developed and validated. The direct acid base titration of four ARA-IIs, namely eprosartan mesylate, irbesartan, telmisartan and valsartan, was carried out in the mixture of ethanol:water (1:1) as solvent using standardized sodium hydroxide aqueous solution as titrant, either visually using phenolphthalein as an indicator or potentiometrically using combined pH electrode. The method was found to be accurate and precise, having relative standard deviation of less than 2% for all ARA-IIs studied. Also, it was shown that the method could be successfully applied to the assay of commercial pharmaceuticals containing the above-mentioned ARA-IIs. The validity of the method was tested by the recovery studies of standard addition to pharmaceuticals and the results were found to be satisfactory. Results obtained by this method were found to be in good agreement with those obtained by UV spectrophotometric method. For UV spectrophotometric analysis ethanol was used as a solvent and wavelength of 233 nm, 246 nm, 296 nm, and 250 nm was selected for determination of eprosartan mesylate, irbesartan, telmisartan, and valsartan respectively. The proposed titrimetric method is simple, rapid, convenient and sufficiently precise for quality control purposes.

Simultaneous analysis of irbesartan and hydrochlorothiazide: an improved HPLC method with the aid of a chemometric protocol

Experimental design method was used for HPLC determination of irbesartan and hydrochlorothiazide in combined dosage forms. The traditional approach for optimization of experiments is time-consuming, involves a large number of runs and does not allow establishing the multiple interacting parameters. The main advantages of the experimental design method include the simultaneous screening of a larger number of factors affecting response and the estimation of possible interactions. On the basis of preliminary experiments, three factors-independent variables were selected as inputs (methanol content, pH of the mobile phase and temperature) and as dependent variables, five responses (resolution, symmetry of irbesartan peak, symmetry of hydrochlorothiazide peak, retention factor of irbesartan and retention factor of hydrochlorothiazide) were chosen. A full 23 factorial design, where factors were examined at two different levels ("low" and "high") was used to determine which factors had an effect on the studied response. Afterwards, experimental design was used to optimize these influent parameters in the previously selected experimental domain. The novelty of our method lies in the optimization step accomplished by Derringer's desirability function. After optimizing the experimental conditions a separation was conducted on a Supelcosil C(18) (150 mm × 4.6 mm, 5 mm particle size) column with a mobile phase consisting of methanol-tetrahydrofuran-acetate buffer 47:10:43 v/v/v, pH 6.5 and a column temperature of 25 °C. The developed method was successfully applied to the simultaneous separation of these drug-active compounds in their commercial pharmaceutical dosage forms.

Validated quantitation of angiotensin II receptor antagonists (ARA-II) in human plasma by liquid-chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry using minimum sample clean-up and investigation of ion suppression

For the quantitation of angiotensin II receptor antagonists (ARA-II) in human plasma, a method using liquid-chromatography (LC)-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) has been developed with respect to simple sample clean-up and investigation of ion suppression effects. For sample preparation, protein precipitation using zinc sulphate and methanol showed advantages in speed, recovery, and reproducibility over solid-phase extraction. A triple quadrupole mass spectrometer (Sciex API 365) with turbo ionspray source was used for detection of compounds with multireaction monitoring (MRM) of two transitions per compound. Suppression effects caused by endogenous matrix compounds were investigated by post-column infusion of analytes and LC analysis of precipitates of blank plasma samples and could be excluded. A validation was performed for the ARA-II drugs (valsartan, irbesartan, losartan and its active metabolite EXP 3174, eprosartan, candesartan, and telmisartan). The developed method showed good intra- and interday precision (<12% relative standard deviation) and accuracy (<11.5% bias) at different concentrations for all the studied compounds. The calculated lower limits of quantitation were between 7 and 13 ng/mL, and the compounds were stable during the analytical process. These rather expensive drugs against hypertension are prescribed with increasing numbers in Europe and the industrialized nations. Complications might arise from overdosage or metabolic disorders. However, drug monitoring is not usually performed. Because the therapeutic concentrations range from a few nanograms to hundreds of nanograms per milliliter for the different drugs, and they are not amenable to gas chromatography/MS analysis because of their high molecular weight and polarity, the LC-MS/MS method is the golden standard for therapeutic drug monitoring and for clinical and forensic toxicology of ARA-II drugs.

Optimizationvia experimental design of an SPE-HPLC-UV-fluorescence method for the determination of valsartan and its metabolite in human plasma samples

A chemometric approach was applied for the optimization of the extraction and separation of the antihypertensive drug valsartan and its metabolite valeryl-4-hydroxy-valsartan from human plasma samples. Due to the high number of experimental and response variables to be studied, fractional factorial design (FFD) and central composite design (CCD) were used to optimize the HPLC-UV-fluorescence method. First, the significant variables were chosen with the help of FFD; then, a CCD was run to obtain the optimal values for the significant variables. The measured responses were the corrected areas of the two analytes and the resolution between the chromatographic peaks. Separation of valsartan, its metabolite valeryl-4-hydroxy-valsartan and candesartan M1, used as internal standard, was made using an Atlantis dC18 100 mm x 3.9 mm id, 100 angstroms, 3 microm chromatographic column. The mobile phase was run in gradient elution mode and consisted of ACN with 0.025% TFA and a 5 mM phosphate buffer with 0.025% TFA at pH 2.5. The initial percentage of ACN was 32% with a stepness of 4.5%/min to reach the 50%. A flow rate of 1.30 mL/min was applied throughout the chromatographic run, and the column temperature was kept to 40+/-0.2 degrees C. In the SPE procedure, experimental design was also used in order at achieve a maximum recovery percentage and extracts free from plasma interferences. The extraction procedure for spiked human plasma samples was carried out using C8 cartridges, phosphate buffer (pH 2, 60 mM) as conditioning agent, a washing step with methanol-phosphate buffer (40:60 v/v), a drying step of 8 min, and diethyl ether as eluent. The SPE-HPLC-UV-fluorescence method developed allowed the separation and quantitation of valsartan and its metabolite from human plasma samples with an adequate resolution and a total analysis time of 1 h.

Validation of a solid phase extraction-high performance liquid chromatographic method for the determination of eprosartan in human plasma

In this work, a solid phase extraction-reversed phase high performance liquid chromatographic (SPE-RP-HPLC) method with photometric detection for monitoring the antihypertensive drug eprosartan has been validated in order to assure good quantitation of eprosartan in plasma samples obtained from patients under cardiovascular treatment. This analytical method was developed by using experimental design and quantitation was accomplished with the internal standard method. No interferences were observed from endogenous compounds of plasma and other drugs which are commonly co-administered in elderly patients. The recoveries of eprosartan from plasma samples, measured at three levels of the linear concentration range (150-4000 ng/mL) were found to be between 93.4 and 102.8%. The intraday and interday precision and accuracy (measured by relative standard deviation, RSD, and relative error, RE, respectively) were always lower than 13% (RSD) and 4% (RE). Stability studies showed that eprosartan stock solutions are stable for at least 3 months when stored at 8 degrees C and plasma samples containing the drug were stable at least during the whole analytical method.

Determination of telmisartan in rat tissues by in-tube solid-phase microextraction coupled to high performance liquid chromatography

A poly(methacrylic acid-ethylene glycol dimethacrylate, MAA-EGDMA) monolithic capillary was used for the direct and on-line extraction of telmisartan from Sprague-Dawley rat tissue (heart, kidney, and liver) homogenates. Under optimized conditions, the tissue homogenates were simply diluted with a mixture of phosphate buffer (pH 2)/ACN (90:8 v/v), and then injected for extraction only after centrifugation and filtration. Coupled to HPLC with fluorescence detection, the method was linear over the range of 1.25-1500 ng/g for telmisartan in heart and kidney, 12.5-15 000 ng/g in liver with correlation coefficients over 0.9992. The detection limits were found to be in the range from 0.24 to 1.8 ng/g. RSDs for intra- and inter-day ranged from 1.2 to 8.1%. The determination of telmisartan in treated rat tissues was achieved by using the proposed method.

Application of first-derivative, ratio derivative spectrophotometry, TLC-densitometry and spectrofluorimetry for the simultaneous determination of telmisartan and hydrochlorothiazide in pharmaceutical dosage forms and plasma

Four sensitive methods are described for the direct determination of telmisartan (TELM) and hydrochlorothiazide (HCT) in combined dosage forms without prior separation. The first method is a first derivative spectophotometry (1D) using a zero- crossing technique of measurement at 241.6 and 227.6 nm for TELM and HCT, respectively. The second method is the first derivative of ratio spectrophotometry (1DD) where the amplitudes were measured at 242.7 nm for TELM and 274.9 nm for HCT. The third method is based on TLC separation of the two drugs followed by the densitometric measurements of their spots at 295 and 225 nm for TELM and HCT, respectively. The separation was carried out on silica gel 60 F254 using butanol: ammonia 25% (8:2 v/v) as mobile phase. The fourth method is spectrofluorimetric determination of TELM, depending on measuring the native fluorescence of the drug in 1 M sodium hydroxide at lambda excitation 230 nm and emission at 365 nm. The proposed methods were applied successfully for the determination of the two drugs in bulk powder and in pharmaceutical formulations. The spectrofluorimetric method was utilized for the analysis of TELM in human plasma.