Characterization of emtricitabine related substances by liquid chromatography coupled to an ion trap mass spectrometer

Emtricitabine (FTC) is an antiretroviral compound that inhibits the HIV-1 reverse transcriptase. For the quantification of FTC related substances, a liquid chromatography (LC) method coupled with ultraviolet (UV) detection was developed earlier in our laboratory. Several unknown compounds were detected during the analysis of a commercial sample. However, most of these impurities were not characterized. In this study, impurity profiling in a selected FTC sample was done using LC–mass spectrometry (MS). Due to the presence of a non-volatile buffer, a desalting procedure was carried out before sending the impurity into the MS. Totally, nine peaks were studied and most of them could be characterized.