Development of a liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry assay for the determination of bestatin in rat plasma and its application to a pharmacokinetic study

Bestatin is a low molecular weight aminopeptidase inhibitor originally isolated from culture filtrates of Streptomyces olivoreticuli. We have developed a sensitive, specific liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) for the quantitative determination of bestatin in rat plasma using granisetron as the internal standard. The analyte and internal standard were isolated from 50 μL plasma samples by solid phase extraction (SPE). Reverse-phase HPLC separation was accomplished on a Lichrospher C18 column (4.6 mm × 50 mm, 5 μm) with a mobile phase composed of methanol–water–formic acid (70:30:0.5, v/v/v) at a flow rate of 0.8 mL/min. The method had a chromatographic total run time of 3 min. A Varian 1200L electrospray tandem mass spectrometer equipped with an electrospray ionization source was operated in selected reaction monitoring (SRM) mode with the precursor-to-product ion transitions m/z 309.2 → 120.0 (bestatin) and 313.4 → 138.0 (granisetron) used for quantitation. The method was sensitive with a lower limit of quantitation (LLOQ) of 5 ng/mL, with good linearity (r2 ≥ 0.999) over the linear range of 5–2000 ng/mL. All the validation data, such as accuracy, precision, and inter-day repeatability, were within the required limits. The method was successfully applied to pharmacokinetic study of bestatin in rats.