Author(s)

Junbo Xing, Hong Cao, Yumin Chen, Caihong Shui, Tingting Shan, Dan Hu

Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Institute for Drug and Instrument Control of Health Department, GLD of PLA, Beijing, China..

A highly sensitive liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometric (LC-MS/MS) method was developed for the de-termination of imperatorin and isoimperatorin in rat plasma using psoralen as internal standard. Analyses were performed on a Shimadzu HPLC system using a Shimadzu C18 column eluted with a mobile phase of methanol-water (25:75), containing 0.1% formic acid at a flow rate of 0.4 ml/min. The detection was performed by positive ion elec-trospray ionization in multiple reactions monitoring mode, monitoring the transitions m/z 203→147 and m/z 203→159 for imperatorin and isoimperatorin, respectively. The method was validated over the concentration range of 2.5 -1000.0 ng/mL for imperatorin and isoimperatorin. The limits of detection and quantification were 1.0 and 3.0 ng/mL, repectively for both analytes. The intra-day and inter-day accuracy and precision of the assay were less than 10.9%. This method has been applied successfully to a pharmacokinetic study involving the intragastric administration of extract of Angelicae Dahuricae Radix to rats.

Imperatorin; Isoimperatorin; LC-MS/MS; Pharmacokinetic

J. Xing, H. Cao, Y. Chen, C. Shui, T. Shan and D. Hu, "An LC-MS/MS Method for Determination of Imperatorin and Isoimperatorin in Rat Plasma and Application to a Pharmacokinetic Study," Pharmacology & Pharmacy, Vol. 4 No. 5, 2013, pp. 417-424. doi: 10.4236/pp.2013.45059.