Simple and versatile high-performance liquid chromatographic method for the simultaneous quantitation of the lactone and carboxylate forms of camptothecin anticancer drugs.

The well documented hydrolysis of the alpha-hydroxy-delta-lactone ring moiety in camptothecin and related analogues is routinely monitored using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Previous HPLC separations of the lactone and carboxylate forms of camptothecins have often required mobile phases containing three to four components; ion-pairing reagent to provide adequate retention of the carboxylate form of the drug; buffer to control the ionic strength and pH of the mobile phase; acetonitrile to control the retention of the lactone form and, in some instances, sodium dodecyl sulfate to reduce peak tailing. Because of the complexity of the mobile phases employed, development of these assays can be a laborious process, requiring re-optimization for each new analogue. In this study, we have developed a simple HPLC methodology for the simultaneous separation of the lactone and carboxylate forms of numerous camptothecin analogues. The mobile phase employed includes only triethylamine acetate (TEAA) buffer and acetonitrile. In this application, triethylamine serves multiple roles; as the ion-pairing reagent, as a masking agent for underivatized silanols and as the major buffer component. By altering only the composition of TEAA buffer with respect to acetonitrile, method development becomes a more streamlined and time efficient process. In this publication, we present the simultaneous separation of the lactone and carboxylate forms of camptothecin and four related analogues, namely, topotecan, GI147211, 10-aminocamptothecin and the CPT-11-SN-38 drug-metabolite pair. It is proposed that this new mobile phase, consisting of only triethylamine acetate buffer and acetonitrile, can be used for the analysis of the several camptothecin derivatives presently in clinical trials as well as the numerous other analogues in preclinical development.