Determination of vandetanib in human plasma and cerebrospinal fluid by liquid chromatography electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS/MS)

A sensitive and precise LC-ESI-MS/MS method for the determination of vandetanib (ZD6474) in human plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) using [13C,d3]-ZD6474 as an internal standard (ISTD) was developed and validated. Sample preparation consisted of a simple liquid–liquid extraction with tert-butyl methyl ether containing 0.1% or 0.5% ammonium hydroxide. ZD6474 and ISTD were separated on a Kinetex C18 column (2.6 μm, 50 mm × 2.1 mm) at ambient temperature with an isocratic mobile phase (acetonitrile/10 mM ammonium formate = 50/50, v/v, at pH 5.0) delivered at 0.11 mL/min. The retention time of both compounds was at 1.60 min in a runtime of three min. Detection was achieved by an API-3200 LC–MS/MS system, monitoring m/z 475.1/112.1 and m/z 479.1/116.2 for vandetanib and ISTD, respectively. The method was linear in the range of 0.25–50 ng/mL (R2 ≥ 0.990) for the CSF curve and from 1.0 to 3000 ng/mL (R2 ≥ 0.992) for the plasma curve. The mean recovery for vandetanib was 80%. Within-day and between-day precisions were ≤8.8% and ≤5.9% for CSF and plasma, respectively. Within-day and between-day accuracies ranged from 95.0 to 98.5% for CSF, and from 104.0 to 108.5% for plasma. Analysis of plasma from six different sources showed no matrix effect for vandetanib (MF = 0.98, %CV ≤ 4.97, n = 6). This method was successfully applied to the analysis of pharmacokinetic samples from children with brain tumors treated with oral vandetanib.