Determination of Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors via Capillary Electrophoresis with Tandem Mass Spectrometry and Online Stacking Preconcentration

Capillary electrophoresis connected with tandem mass spectrometry was employed for the development of a method for determination of various tyrosine kinase inhibitors in plasma samples. A stacking online preconcentration with a 120 cm-long capillary was used for the determination of bosutinib, dasatinib, canertinib, and erlotinib at physiologically relevant concentrations. The optimization included both capillary electrophoresis and mass spectrometry steps. Under optimal conditions, 50 mM formic acid pH 2.5, an injection time of 120 s, and an optimized mass spectrometry set-up (as sheath liquid composition 75:24.9:0.1 (v/v) methanol, water, formic acid, and appropriate conditions for ion transitions), LODs in a range of 3.9–23.0 nmol·L−1 were observed. The method was validated in terms of linearity, limit of detection, limit of quantification, repeatability of migration times and peak area, and recovery using plasma as a matrix for analytes. The results showed that this method has great promise for use in many analytical tasks, e.g., therapeutic drug monitoring.