Separation of antimalarial drugs by capillary electrophoresis

Author(s)

Karina Trevisan Rodrigues

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Conjunto das Químicas (IQ e FCF) (CQ/DBDCQ)
• Defense date: 2012-08-24

Examining board members

Marina Franco Maggi Tavares; Anderson Rodrigo Moraes de Oliveira; Pedro Vitoriano de Oliveira

• Advisor: Marina Franco Maggi Tavares

Abstract

Malaria is a disease that causes a large number of deaths worldwide. The use of antimalarial drugs is the most effective solution to combat and control the disease and interest in the development of new antimalarial drugs is still of great importance due to resistance issues. There is a wide variety of antimalarial drugs, many of which are chiral, sold and administered as racemic mixtures. In recent decades there has been an increased interest regarding the pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic aspects of chiral drugs, due to the knowledge that one of the isomers can be more active or more toxic than the other. Thus, there is a need for the development of enantioselective analytical methods, and capillary electrophoresis has emerged as a chiral technique separation with high resolving power. Moreover, the lack of official methods for antimalarial drugs and the few studies reporting applications in the analysis of pharmaceutical formulations, demands the development and validation of new methods for this purpose. This work aims at the development of two analytical methods, non-chiral and chiral, for the determination of antimalarial drugs in pharmaceutical formulations by capillary electrophoresis. The non-chiral method used capillary zone electrophoresis, being optimized for the separation of 7 antimalarial drugs (chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, primaquine, quinidine, quinine, quinacrine and mefloquine) with an electrolyte consisting of 45 mmol L-1 of citrate buffer, pH 4.50, and had an analysis time of 10 minutes, allowing separation of isolated diasteroisomers quinine and quinidine without any additives. The chiral method used capillary zone electrophoresis modified by cyclodextrin and was optimized for enantioselective separation of chloroquine, mefloquine, hydroxychloroquine, primaquine, quinine and quinidine with an electrolyte consisting of 50 mmol L-1 citrate buffer and 2% S-β-CD, pH 2.7. The separation of the antimalarial drugs and their enantiomers was achieved in less than 12 minutes. The proposed methods were validated following official protocols, with adequate results and were used for determination of chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, and mefloquine in pharmaceutical formulations. Figures of merit for the non-chiral method include: linearity (R2> 0.99), LD (7.43 to 24.4 µmol L-1), LQ (22.5 to 73.8 µmol L-1), intermediary precision (0.76 to 1.7% RSD), and recovery (from 97.8 to 102.2%). For the chiral method, we have: linearity (R2> 0.99), LD (7.43 to 9.58 µmol L-1), LQ (22.8 to 29.0 µmol L-1), intermediary precision (0.50 to 1.8% RSD), and recovery (from 97.7 to 102.5%). For both methods a robustness test was performed to compare the results obtained by applying slight variations in voltage and temperature. It was observed that there is no significant difference between the results, a confidence level P = 95%. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 09/13072-4 - ASSESSMENT OF ENANTIOMERIC ANTIMALARIAL DRUGS USING CAPILLARY ELECTROPHORESIS
• Grantee: Karina Trevisan Rodrigues
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master