Determination of mitoxantrone in rat plasma by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry method: Application to a pharmacokinetic study

Wearable plasmonic-metasurface sensor for noninvasive and universal molecular fingerprint detection on biointerfaces

Wearable sensing technology is an essential link to future personalized medicine. However, to obtain a complete picture of human health, it is necessary but challenging to track multiple analytes inside the body simultaneously. Here, we present a wearable plasmonic-electronic sensor with "universal" molecular recognition ability. Flexible plasmonic metasurface with surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)-activity is introduced as the fundamental sensing component in a wearable sensor since we solved the technical challenge of maintaining the plasmonic activities of their brittle nanostructures under various deformations. Together with a flexible electronic sweat extraction system, our sensor can noninvasively extract and "fingerprint" analytes inside the body based on their unique SERS spectra. As a proof-of-concept example, we successfully monitored the variation of trace-amounts drugs inside the body and obtained an individual's drug metabolic profile. Our sensor bridges the existing gap in wearable sensing technology by providing a universal, sensitive molecular tracking means to assess human health.

Evaluation of inhibitory effects of flavonoids on breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP): From library screening to biological evaluation to structure-activity relationship

Flavonoids are a group of polyphenols ubiquitously present in vegetables, fruits and herbal products, despite various known pharmacological activities, few researches have been done about the interaction of flavonoids with breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP). The present study was designed to investigate the inhibitory effects of 99 flavonoids on BCRP in vitro and in vivo and to clarify structure-activity relationships of flavonoids with BCRP. Eleven flavonoids, including amentoflavone, apigenin, biochanin A, chrysin, diosimin, genkwanin, hypericin, kaempferol, kaempferide, licochalcone A and naringenin, exhibited significant inhibition (>50%) on BCRP in BCRP-MDCKII cells, which reduced the BCRP-mediated efflux of doxorubicin and temozolomide, accordingly increased their cytotoxicity. In addition, co-administration of mitoxantrone with the 11 flavonoids increased the AUC0-t of mitoxantrone in different extents in rats. Among them, chrysin increased the AUC0-t most significantly, by 81.97%. Molecular docking analysis elucidated the inhibition of flavonoids on BCRP might be associated with Pi-Pi stacked interactions and/or potential Pi-Alkyl interactions, but not conventional hydrogen bonds. The pharmacophore model indicated the aromatic ring B, hydrophobic groups and hydrogen bond acceptors may play critical role in the potency of flavonoids inhibition on BCRP. Thus, our findings would provide helpful information for predicting the potential risks of flavonoid-containing food/herb-drug interactions in humans.

Modern Assay Techniques for Cancer Drugs: Electroanalytical and Liquid Chromatography Methods

In the past decades, patients who have chemotherapy treatment have considerably increased number. At this point, the development of rapid precise, and reliable methods are very important to analyze cancer drugs from their dosage forms, animals or human biological samples. Among all the analytical methods, electrochemical methods hold an important position with their unique properties such as specificity in the biological recognition process, fast response, and their reliability and do not need a pretreatment process. Chromatographic methods are also used in a wide range of analytical applications for the analyses of anticancer drugs. The power of chromatography comes from its ability to separate a mixture of analytes and determination of their concentrations. Chromatographic techniques can mainly be divided into gas, liquid, and supercritical fluid chromatography. In the frame of this information, this review is aimed to provide basic principles of electroanalytical and high-performance liquid chromatography methods for the analysis of cancer drugs. In addition, some selected applications for electrochemistry-related techniques and high-performance liquid chromatography, for the determination of anti-cancer pharmaceuticals published in the last five years are also discussed.

Mass spectrometry in the pharmacokinetic studies of anticancer natural products

In the history of medicine, nature has represented the main source of medical products. Indeed, the therapeutic use of plants certainly goes back to the Sumerian and Hippocrates and nowadays nature still represents the major source for new drugs discovery. Moreover, in the cancer treatment, drugs are either natural compounds or have been developed from naturally occurring parent compounds firstly isolated from plants and microbes from terrestrial and marine environment. A critical element of an anticancer drug is represented by its severe toxicities and, after administration, the drug concentrations have to remain in an appropriate range to be effective. Anyway, the drug dosage defined during the clinical studies could be inappropriate for an individual patient due to differences in drug absorption, metabolism and excretion. For this reason, personalized medicine, based on therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM), represents one of most important challenges in cancer therapy. Mass spectrometry sensitivity, specificity and fastness lead to elect this technique as the Golden Standard for pharmacokinetics and drug metabolism studies therefore for TDM. This review focuses on the mass spectrometry-based methods developed for pharmacokinetic quantification in human plasma of anticancer drugs derived from natural sources and already used in clinical practice. Particular emphasis was placed both on the pre-analytical and analytical steps, such as: sample preparation procedures, sample size required by the analysis and the limit of quantification of drugs and metabolites to give some insights on the clinical practice applicability. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Mass Spec Rev. 36:213-251, 2017.

Antineoplastic drugs and their analysis: a state of the art review

We provide an overview of the analytical methods available for the quantification of antineoplastic drugs in pharmaceutical formulations, biological and environmental samples.

Synergistic and complete reversal of the multidrug resistance of mitoxantrone hydrochloride by three-in-one multifunctional lipid-sodium glycocholate nanocarriers based on simultaneous BCRP and Bcl-2 inhibition

Multidrug resistance (MDR) is a severe obstacle to successful chemotherapy due to its complicated nature that involves multiple mechanisms, such as drug efflux by transporters (P-glycoprotein and breast cancer resistance protein, BCRP) and anti-apoptotic defense (B-cell lymphoma, Bcl-2). To synergistically and completely reverse MDR by simultaneous inhibition of pump and non-pump cellular resistance, three-in-one multifunctional lipid-sodium glycocholate (GcNa) nanocarriers (TMLGNs) have been designed for controlled co-delivery of water-soluble cationic mitoxantrone hydrochloride (MTO), cyclosporine A (CsA – BCRP inhibitor), and GcNa (Bcl-2 inhibitor). GcNa and dextran sulfate were incorporated as anionic compounds to enhance the encapsulation efficiency of MTO (up to 97.8%±1.9%) and sustain the release of cationic MTO by electrostatic interaction. The results of a series of in vitro and in vivo investigations indicated that the TMLGNs were taken up by the resistant cancer cells by an endocytosis pathway that escaped the efflux induced by BCRP, and the simultaneous release of CsA with MTO further efficiently inhibited the efflux of the released MTO by BCRP; meanwhile GcNa induced the apoptosis process, and an associated synergistic antitumor activity and reversion of MDR were achieved because the reversal index was almost 1.0.

Nanostructured lipid-carrageenan hybrid carriers (NLCCs) for controlled delivery of mitoxantrone hydrochloride to enhance anticancer activity bypassing the BCRP-mediated efflux

Novel nanostructured lipid-carrageenan hybrid carriers (NLCCs) were exploited for controlled delivery of water soluble chemotherapeutic agent mitoxantrone hydrochloride (MTO) with high loading capacity, sustained release property, and potential for improving oral bioavailability and antitumor efficacy. By introducing the negative polymer of carrageenan, MTO was highly incorporated into NLCCs with encapsulation efficiency of 95.8% by electrostatic interaction. In vivo pharmacokinetics of MTO solution (MTO-Sol) and MTO-NLCCs in rats demonstrated that the apparent bioavailability of MTO-NLCCs was increased to approximate 3.5-fold compared to that of MTO-Sol. The cytotoxicity investigations by MTT method indicated that NLCCs could significantly enhanced the antitumor efficacy against resistant MCF-7/MX cells. The relative cellular association of MTO-NLCCs was 9.2-fold higher than that of MTO-Sol in breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP) over-expressing MCF-7/MX cells, implying that BCRP-mediated drug efflux was diminished by the introduction of NLCCs. The endocytosis inhibition study implied that the NLCCs entered the MCF-7/MX cells by clathrin-mediated endocytosis process, which can bypass the efflux of MTO mediated by BCRP. The new developed NLCCs provide an effective strategy for oral delivery of water-soluble MTO with improved encapsulation efficiency, oral bioavailability, and cytotoxicity against resistant breast cancer cells.

Plasma membrane targeting by short chain sphingolipids inserted in liposomes improves anti-tumor activity of mitoxantrone in an orthotopic breast carcinoma xenograft model

Mitoxantrone (MTO) is clinically used for treatment of various types of cancers providing an alternative for similarly active, but more toxic chemotherapeutic drugs such as anthracyclines. To further decrease its toxicity MTO was encapsulated into liposomes. Although liposomal drugs can accumulate in target tumor tissue, they still face the plasma membrane barrier for effective intracellular delivery. Aiming to improve MTO tumor cell availability, we used short chain lipids to target and modulate the tumor cell membrane, promoting MTO plasma membrane traversal. MTO was encapsulated in liposomes containing the short chain sphingolipid (SCS), C8-Glucosylceramide (C8-GluCer) or C8-Galactosylceramide (C8-GalCer) in their bilayer. These new SCS-liposomes containing MTO (SCS-MTOL) were tested in vivo for tolerability, pharmacokinetics, biodistribution, tumor drug delivery by intravital microscopy and efficacy, and compared to standard MTO liposomes (MTOL) and free MTO. Liposomal encapsulation decreased MTO toxicity and allowed administration of higher drug doses. SCS-MTOL displayed increased clearance and lower skin accumulation compared to standard MTOL. Intratumoral liposomal drug delivery was heterogeneous and rather limited in hypoxic tumor areas, yet SCS-MTOL improved intracellular drug uptake in comparison with MTOL. The increased MTO availability correlated well with the improved antitumor activity of SCS-MTOL in a MDAMB-231 breast carcinoma model. Multiple dosing of liposomal MTO strongly delayed tumor growth compared to free MTO and prolonged mouse survival, whereas among the liposomal MTO treatments, C8-GluCer-MTOL was most effective. Targeting plasma membranes with SCS improved MTO tumor availability and thereby therapeutic activity and represents a promising approach to improve MTO-based chemotherapy.

Analysis of anticancer drugs: a review

In the last decades, the number of patients receiving chemotherapy has considerably increased. Given the toxicity of cytotoxic agents to humans (not only for patients but also for healthcare professionals), the development of reliable analytical methods to analyse these compounds became necessary. From the discovery of new substances to patient administration, all pharmaceutical fields are concerned with the analysis of cytotoxic drugs. In this review, the use of methods to analyse cytotoxic agents in various matrices, such as pharmaceutical formulations and biological and environmental samples, is discussed. Thus, an overview of reported analytical methods for the determination of the most commonly used anticancer drugs is given.