Hydrophilic Interaction Liquid Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry: An Attractive and Prospective Method for the Quantitative Bioanalysis in Drug Metabolism.

During the development, dosage optimization and safety evaluation of a drug, rapid and precise monitoring of administered drug and/or its metabolites in biological samples including blood, plasma, serum, tissues and saliva are vital. As drug biotransformation produces more hydrophilic metabolites for the enhancement of drug elimination, which is often a challenge for traditional reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) separation. Because hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) is capable of retaining polar compounds and readily compatible with mass spectrometry (MS), HILIC has been used as a complementary separation technique to RPLC for analysis of polar metabolites, especially polar drugs and their metabolites. This review covers core aspects of HILIC-MS/MS method and overall profile of its application in analysis of drug and/or its metabolites. The emphasis of this paper has been placed on the applications of HILIC-MS/MS method in quantitative bioanalysis of drugs alone or along with their metabolites in drug metabolism studies in recent years. As a fundamental and critical step of bioanalytical method, conventional sample preparation techniques of biological matrices for the HILIC-MS/MS analysis of drugs and/or their metabolites are also briefly featured.