A simple and sensitive HPLC-UV method for the determination of ponicidin in rat plasma and its application in a pharmacokinetic study

A simple, rapid, selective and sensitive HPLC-UV method has been developed and validated for the determination of ponicidin in rat plasma. The analyte was extracted from rat plasma by liquid-liquid extraction with ethyl acetate as the extraction solvent. The LC separation was performed on a Zorbax Eclipse XDB C(18) analytical column (150 x 4.6 mm i.d., 5 mu m) with an isocratic mobile phase consisting of methanol-water-phosphoric acid (45:55:0.01, v/v/v) at a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. There was a good linearity over the range of 0.1-25 mu g/mL (r = 0.9995) with a weighted (1/C(2)) least square method. The lower limit of quantification was proved to be 0.1 mu g/mL. The accuracy was within +/- 10.0% in terms of relative error and the intra-and inter-day precisions were less than 9.1% in terms of relative standard deviation. After validation, the method was successfully applied to characterize the pharmacokinetics of ponicidin in rats. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.