Determination and pharmacokinetic studies of artesunate and its metabolite in sheep plasma by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry

A simple sensitive UFLC-MS/MS method for the simultaneous quantification of artesunate, dihydroartemisinin and quercetin in rat plasma and its application to pharmacokinetic studies

An ultrafast liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UFLC-MS/MS) method was developed for the simultaneous estimation of artesunate (ART), dihydroartemisinin (DHA, an active metabolite of ART) and quercetin (QRT) in rat plasma. The separation was achieved using a Zorbax C18 column (3 μm, 50 mm × 4.6 mm) as a stationary phase with a mobile phase of 0.1% formic acid (10% by volume) and methanol (90% by volume) at a flow rate of 0.4 mL min-1 and an injection volume of 10 μL. Artemisinin (ATM) was used as the internal standard (IS). Mass detection was performed by electrospray ionization (ESI)-tandem mass spectrometry via multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) in positive mode except for QRT, where negative ionization was used. The extraction recoveries of ART, DHA, and QRT from plasma were found to be 91.05-99.62%, 95.12-98.56% and 89.35-98.90%, respectively. The developed method was validated and successfully applied to the quantitative analysis of ART, DHA and QRT in plasma samples after the oral administration of ART and ART-QRT pure drugs to rats at the dose of 5 mg kg-1 each. The results reveal that the developed method can be further used for the quantification of the proposed combination drugs in nanoformulations.

Interactions between artemisinin derivatives and P-glycoprotein

BACKGROUND

Artemisinin was isolated and identified in 1972, which was the starting point for a new era in antimalarial drug therapy. Furthermore, numerous studies have demonstrated that artemisinin and its derivatives exhibit considerable anticancer activity both in vitro, in vivo, and even in clinical Phase I/II trials. P-glycoprotein (P-gp) mediated multi-drug resistance (MDR) is one of the most serious causes of chemotherapy failure in cancer treatment. Interestingly, many artemisinin derivatives exhibit excellent ability to overcome P-gp mediated MDR and even show collateral sensitivity against MDR cancer cells. Furthermore, some artemisinin derivatives show P-gp-mediated MDR reversal activity. Therefore, the interaction between P-gp and artemisinin derivatives is important to develop novel combination treatment protocols with artemisinin derivatives and established anticancer drugs that are P-gp substrates.

PURPOSE

This systematic review provides an updated overview on the interaction between artemisinin derivatives and P-gp and the effect of artemisinin derivatives on the P-gp expression level.

RESULTS

Artemisinin derivatives exhibit multi-specific interactions with P-gp. The currently used artemisinin derivatives are not transported by P-gp. However, some of novel synthetized artemisinin derivatives exhibit P-gp substrate properties. Furthermore, many artemisinin derivatives act as P-gp inhibitors, which exhibit the potential to reverse MDR towards clinically used anticancer drugs.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, studies on the interaction between artemisinin derivatives and P-gp provide important information for the development of novel anti-cancer artemisinin derivatives to reverse P-gp mediated MDR and for the design of rational artemisinin-based combination therapies against cancer.