Development and validation of a stability-indicating RP-HPLC method for the simultaneous estimation of process related impurities and degradation products of rasagiline mesylate in pharmaceutical formulation.

A sensitive, stability-indicating gradient reverse phase high-performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet method has been developed for the quantitative determination of process-related impurities and forced degradation products of rasagiline mesylate in pharmaceutical formulation. Efficient chromatographic separation was achieved on an ACE C8, 150 × 4.6 mm, 3 µm column with mobile phase containing a gradient mixture of solvents A and B. The flow rate of the mobile phase was 0.8 mL/min with column temperature of 30°C and detection wavelength at 210 nm. Rasagiline was subjected to the stress conditions of oxidative, acid, base, hydrolytic, thermal and photolytic degradation. Rasagiline was found to degrade significantly in acid and thermal stress conditions. The degradation products were well resolved from rasagiline and its impurities. The peak purity test results confirmed that the rasagiline peak was homogenous and pure in all stress samples and the mass balance was found to be more than 97%, thus proving the stability-indicating power of the method. The developed method was validated according to the guidelines of the International Conference on Harmonization with respect to specificity, linearity, limits of detection and quantification, accuracy, precision and robustness.