Therapeutic Drug Monitoring in Oncohematological Patients: A Fast and Accurate HPLC-UV Method for the Quantification of Nilotinib in Human Plasma and Its Clinical Application

Nilotinib, a second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitor, has demonstrated clinical activity in chronic myeloid leukemia. As an exposure-response relationship has been observed for nilotinib, its therapeutic drug monitoring could be a valuable tool in clinical practice. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop and validate a selective and precise high performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet method for the measurement of nilotinib in plasma from patients with cancer. After protein precipitation extraction with acetonitrile, nilotinib and rilpivirine were separated using isocratic elution on a Tracer Excel 120 ODS C18 column using a mobile phase consisting of a mixture of potassium dihydrogen phosphate-buffered solution (pH 5.5; 0.037 M)-methanol-acetonitrile (45:45:10, v/v/v), pumped at a flow rate of 1.7 mL·min-1. A wavelength of 254 nm was selected for the quantification of the analyte and the internal standard (IS). The technique was validated following the guidelines for the validation of analytical methods of regulatory agencies (Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA)). Linearity was established in a concentration range between 125 and 7000 ng/mL. The detection limit was 90 ng/mL, and the lower limit of quantification was 125 ng/mL. For all concentrations in the calibration curve, the intraday and interday coefficients of variation were less than 4.1%. Median recovery of nilotinib from plasma was ≥65.1% (±21.4%). The method described is sensitive, selective, reproducible, and rapid, and can be used for the accurate determination of nilotinib in human plasma for pharmacokinetics studies and for therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of nilotinib in routine clinical practice.