Application of High Performance Liquid Chromatography in the Determination of Tauromustine in Presence of Its Metabolites and Degradation Products

A reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was developed for the determination of tauromustine (TM) in presence of its metabolited in biological fluids and its degradation products in tablets. The proposed HPLC method was conducted using a lichrosorb C18 column [250 × 4 mm], with acetonitrile - water - acetate buffer pH5 (40: 55: 5) eluent, the detection was affected at 235 nm. The detector response was linear in the range 0.2–4 μg/ml for TM with minimum detectability (S/N=2) of 2 ng/ml. The proposed HPLC method was applied to the determination of TM in presence of its metabolites in biological fluids. The percentage recoveries of TM and its metabolites from spiked urine range from 93.1 to 92.9 and for plasma 90.3 to 89.6. The proposed HPLC method was used to study the kinetics of degradation of TM in standard solution as a function of temperature and alkalinity. TM degraded followed first-order kineties in agreement with the Arrhenius theory. The proposed HPLC method was applied in tablets and the results obtained were in good agreement with those obtained by the reference method.