Identification and characterization of forced degradation products of vortioxetine by LC/MS/MS and NMR

An Overview of Degradation Strategies for Amitriptyline

Antidepressant drugs play a crucial role in the treatment of mental health disorders, but their efficacy and safety can be compromised by drug degradation. Recent reports point to several drugs found in concentrations ranging from the limit of detection (LOD) to hundreds of ng/L in wastewater plants around the globe; hence, antidepressants can be considered emerging pollutants with potential consequences for human health and wellbeing. Understanding and implementing effective degradation strategies are essential not only to ensure the stability and potency of these medications but also for their safe disposal in line with current environment remediation goals. This review provides an overview of degradation pathways for amitriptyline, a typical tricyclic antidepressant drug, by exploring chemical routes such as oxidation, hydrolysis, and photodegradation. Connex issues such as stability-enhancing approaches through formulation and packaging considerations, regulatory guidelines, and quality control measures are also briefly noted. Specific case studies of amitriptyline degradation pathways forecast the future perspectives and challenges in this field, helping researchers and pharmaceutical manufacturers to provide guidelines for the most effective degradation pathways employed for minimal environmental impact.

Influence of Crystal Disorder on the Forced Oxidative Degradation of Vortioxetine HBr

The present study investigates the impact of the solid-state disorder of vortioxetine hydrobromide (HBr) on oxidative degradation under accelerated conditions. A range of solid-state disorders was generated via cryogenic ball milling. The solid-state properties were evaluated by calorimetry, infrared-, and Raman spectroscopies. While salt disproportionation occurred upon milling, no chemical degradation occurred by milling. The amorphous fraction remained physically intact under ambient storage conditions. Subsequently, samples with representative disordered fractions were mixed with a solid oxidative stressor (PVP-H2O2 complex) and were compressed to compacts. The compacts were exposed to 40°C/75% RH for up to 6 h. The sample was periodically withdrawn and analyzed for the physical transformations and degradation. Two oxidative degradation products (DPs) were found to be formed, for which dissimilar relations to the degree of disorder and kinetics of formation were observed. The degradation rate of the major DP formation obtained by fitting the exponential model to the experimental data was found to increase up to a certain degree of disorder and decrease with a further increase in the disordered fraction. In contrast, the minor DP formation kinetics was found to increase monotonically with the increase in the disorder content. For the similar crystallinity level, the degradation trend (rate and extent) differed between the single-phase disorder generated by milling and physically mixed two-phase systems. Overall, the study demonstrates the importance of evaluating the physical and chemical (in)stabilities of the disordered solid state of a salt form of a drug substance, generated through mechano-activation.

Identification and characterization of forced degradation products of 5-hydroxymethyl-2-furaldehyde (5-HMF) by HPLC, LC-LTQ/Orbitrap and NMR studies

5-Hydroxymethyl-2-furaldehyde (5-HMF) is a kind of aldehyde compound with highly active furan ring, which is generated by dehydration of glucose, fructose, and other monosaccharides. It widely exists in drugs, foods, health products, cosmetics, and traditional Chinese medicine preparations with high sugar content. Due to the toxicity, the concentration of 5-HMF was always monitored to identify non-conformities and adulteration, as well as ensure the process efficiency, traceability and safety in foods or drugs in the pharmacopoeias of various countries. Herein, a comprehensive forced degradation study was performed to characterize the degradation products (DPs) of 5-HMF under hydrolytic (neutral, acidic, and alkaline) degradation, oxidative, thermal, humidity, and photolytic degradation conditions. A total of five degradants were identified, and two of them (DP-3 and DP-5) were novel DPs first reported in our study. Major DPs (i.e., DP-1 and DP-2) with relatively high peak areas were isolated using semi-preparative HPLC and characterized by LC-LTQ/Orbitrap and NMR. 5-HMF was only stable in alkaline hydrolysis condition. In addition, the degradation pathways and mechanism of these DPs were also explained using LC-LTQ/Orbitrap. In silico toxicity and metabolism behavior of the DPs were evaluated using Derek Nexus and Meteor Nexus software, respectively. The predicted toxicity data indicated that both the drug 5-HMF and its DPs bear the potential of hepatotoxicity, mutagenicity, chromosome damage, and skin sensitisation. Our research may be beneficial for the quality control and suitable storage conditions of 5-HMF.

Mini Review on Forced Degradation Studies on Anti-Epileptic Drugs and Beyond

In this review on the forced degradation studies on anti-epileptic drugs and the development of validated stability-indicating assay methods for drug substances and products at a condition more severe than accelerated condition (i.e. 40 ± 2°C, 75 ± 5% relative humidity), the drug substance and drug product undergo degradation is known as forced or stress degradation. To know about the impurities developed during the storage of drug products in various environmental conditions. The limit of degradation allowable is 5-20%. More than 20% of degradation is abnormal and must be investigated. Any regulatory guidelines do not mention the pH conditions for acid or base hydrolysis, the temperature for thermal degradation or the concentration of the oxidation agent. Only International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) guidelines Q1B photostability stability and states that light sources must be a combination of UV and visible light. The shortcomings of mentioned techniques with appreciation to regulatory necessities are highlighted. A systematic method for the forced degradation studies on anti-epileptic drugs such as "Topiramate, Vigabatrin, Lacosamide, Tiagabine, Levetiracetam and Zonisamide" is discussed. This review helps researchers to get an idea about stability-indicating methods of development and validation for newer antiepileptic drugs and the characteristics of drug products that degrade under specific degradation conditions.

Development of the Validated Stability-Indicating Method for the Determination of Vortioxetine in Bulk and Pharmaceutical Formulation by HPLC-DAD, Stress Degradation Kinetics Studies and Detection of Degradation Products by LC-ESI-QTOF-MS

Vortioxetine (VOR) is a new antidepressant drug used to treat major depressive disorder. In this work, a novel, simple, rapid, accurate, precise, selective, stability-indicating, and fully validated high-performance liquid chromatography method with diode array detection (HPLC-DAD) was developed to determine VOR in bulk and pharmaceutical formulations. A Polar-RP column was used, with a mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile (ACN), methanol (MeOH), acetate buffer pH 3.5, and addition of diethylamine (DEA) in the isocratic elution mode. Assessing the stability of the VOR is fundamental to guarantee the efficacy, safety, and quality of drug products. In this study, the VOR active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and tablets were subjected to a detailed study of forced degradation, using several degrading agents (acid, alkaline, water, heat, light, and oxidation agents). The developed HPLC-DAD method allows the collection of all the essential data to determine degradation kinetics. It was found that the decomposition of vortioxetine is fragile towards oxidative conditions and photolysis, yielding the first-order and second-order kinetic reaction in the above stress conditions, respectively. The degradation products (DPs) were identified by the high-resolution liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization-quadrupole-time of flight-mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-QTOF-MS) method. The HPLC-DAD method was successfully applied for the quantification of VOR in tablets. Additionally, in silico toxicity prediction of the DPs was performed.

Recent Progresses in Analytical Perspectives of Degradation Studies and Impurity Profiling in Pharmaceutical Developments: An Updated Review

Forced degradation studies have been used to simplify analytical methodology development and achieve a deeper knowledge about the inherent stability of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and drug products. This provides insight into degradation species and pathways. Identification of impurities in pharmaceutical products is closely related to the selection of the most appropriate analytical methods like HPLC-UV, LC-MS/MS, LC-NMR, GC-MS, and capillary electrophoresis. Herein, recent trends in analytical perspectives during 2018-April 14, 2021, are discussed based on forced and impurity degradation profiling of pharmaceuticals. Literature review showed that several methods have been used for experimental design and analysis conditions such as matrix type, column type, mobile phase, elution modes, detection wavelengths, and therapeutic category. Thus, since these factors influence the separation and identification of the impurities and degradation products, we attempted to perform a statistical analysis for the developed methods according to the abovementioned factors.

Investigation on the stability in plant metabolomics with a special focus on freeze-thaw cycles: LC-MS and NMR analysis to Cassiae Semen (Cassia obtusifolia L.) seeds as a case study

Metabolomics is a rapid and sensitive tool for the detection of dynamic metabolic compositions in the study of systemic metabolic consequences. However, it is also susceptible to a tiny variation of pre-analytical handling procedures. To provide reproducible results, specific knowledge on metabolites perturbance along with different freeze-thaw cycles (FTCs) is needed for further metabolomics studies. In this paper, five FTCs of germinated Cassiae Semen (CS) were chosen as a case study to investigate the influence of FTC effect based on UHPLC-Q-Orbitrap-MS and NMR technologies. A total of 108 metabolites were relatively quantified by LC-MS and NMR analyses. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that the first and second FTC samples are welly separated from the other groups; however, the extent of FTC-induced effects are smaller after the third cycle. Upon five consecutive FTCs, alterations which consisted of decreased stachyose, sucrose, norrubrofusarin-6-O-β-d-glucopyranoside, and quercetin 3-(3″-acetylgalactoside), as well as increased phenylalanine, leucine, isoleucine, methionine, phenylalanine, mannose, gluconic acid, and valine, could be observed. FTC does not exert the same effect on all metabolites. Although a large number of secondary metabolites were stable when subjected to five FTCs, FTC effects may lead to false-positive in the discovery of biomarker. In the case of reusing plant seed samples, no more than three consecutive freeze-thaw cycles were found advisable. This work provides unique perspectives on the FTC effects, which may fill in some existing gaps in the knowledge of the stability of plant metabolites during sample pre-handling.

Pharmacokinetics of 10-Hydroxy Mesaconitine in Rat Plasma by Ultra-Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Quadrupole Mass Spectrometry

Mesaconitine is the predominant active ingredient in Aconitum carmichaelii Debx. The compound 10-hydroxy mesaconitine is one known metabolite of mesaconitine and is toxic. In order to better understand its pharmacokinetics, UPLC-MS/MS was used in this paper to measure the concentration of 10-hydroxy mesaconitine in the plasma of rats after oral (5 mg/kg) and intravenous (0.1 mg/kg) administration of 10-hydroxy mesaconitine. The concentrations of 10-hydroxy mesaconitine in rat plasma measured in the standard curve covered the range of 0.3-60 ng/mL. The intraday and interday precisions of the samples of 10-hydroxy mesaconitine in rat plasma were lower than 15%. In addition, the accuracies ranged between 96.0% and 109.3%, the matrix effects ranged between 88.9% and 98.1%, and the recoveries were all higher than 79.1%. The AUC(0 - t) values were 23.6 ± 5.9 and 207.6 ± 72.9 ng/mL·h for intravenous and oral administration, respectively, and the bioavailability of 10-hydroxy mesaconitine was 17.6%. Lastly, t 1/2 was 1.3 ± 0.6 h and 3.1 ± 0.4 h for intravenous and oral administration, respectively.