Development of a novel UPLC-MS/MS method for the simultaneously quantification of polydatin and resveratrol in plasma: Application to a pharmacokinetic study in rats

The purpose of this study is to develop a sensitive LC-MS-MS method to simultaneously quantify polydatin and its metabolite, resveratrol, for its application in a pharmacokinetic (PK) study and to determine polydatin hydrolysis by microflora. A Shimadzu UHPLC system coupled to an AB Sciex QTrap 4000 mass spectrometer was used for the analysis. Separation was achieved using an Acquity BEH C18 column (2.1 × 50 mm) with acetonitrile and 0.1% formic acid as the mobile phases. Analysis was performed under negative ionization mode using the multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) approach. The method was linear in the range of 9.77-1250 nM for both resveratrol and polydatin with correlation coefficient values >0.99. Themethodhas been shown to be reproducible, with intra- and inter-day accuracy and precision ±10.4% of nominal values, for both analytes. The average extraction recovery rates were 81.78-98.3% for polydatin and 86.4-103.2% for resveratrol, respectively. Matrix effect was in the acceptable range (<15%). The analytes in plasma were found to be stable under bench-top, freeze-thaw, and storage (-4 °C) conditions. The metabolic studies showed that polydatin can be rapidly hydrolyzed by rat fecal S9 fractions and PK studies showed that both polydatin and resveratrol were exposed in the plasma and variable tissues. This novel UPLC-MS-MS method can quantify the levels of both polydatin and its major metabolite resveratrol in biological samples.