An enzymatic kinetic method for the determination of 2'-deoxycoformycin in biological fluids.

An analytical method for determination of 2'-deoxycoformycin (2'-DCF) concentrations in plasma and urine was developed based upon a modification of adenosine deaminase (ADA) inhibition assays described in the literature. The method involves the spectrophotometric monitoring of the rate of deamination of adenosine by the enzyme in the presence of various concentrations of the inhibitor 2'-DCF, and relating the deamination rate to the 2'-DCF concentration. In the course of developing the method, it was found that adenosine deaminase appears to lose activity after dilution with phosphate buffer (pH 7.2). Enzyme inactivation was found to occur mono-exponentially with time and, in order to accommodate for this inactivation, a method was developed for quantitating 2'-DCF which takes into consideration the relative activity of the enzyme in the incubation mixtures. The results obtained from the analysis of samples containing known concentrations of 2'-DCF were fitted to a three-dimensional standard surface by means of a nonlinear least-squares regression computer program. Quantitation of 2'-DCF in patient samples is accomplished by an ADA inhibition titration technique in which the spectrophotometrically determined absorbance change is related to the two independent variables, the concentration of 2'-DCF in the standards and the relative time of the analysis. As little as 1 ng/ml of 2'-DCF in plasma can be quantitated with the assay.