Stability indicating validated high‐performance liquid chromatography method for simultaneous estimation of chlorin e6 and curcumin in bulk and drug‐loaded lipidic nanoformulation

Abstract Chlorin e6 and curcumin are often used in the treatment of various cancers, including breast, skin, colon, and lung cancer. The present objective of this study is to develop a simple, sensitive, precise, and selective reversed‐phase high‐performance liquid chromatography analytical method for the estimation of curcumin and chlorin e6. Curcumin and chlorin e6 are both estimated simultaneously in bulk and on nanocarriers based formulations. The efficient chromatographic separation of chlorine e6 and curcumin was obtained using SUPELCO C‐18 column with a mobile phase containing ACN and water (pH 2.6 adjusted with trifluoracetic acid 0.1%) in an isocratic mode at a detection wavelength of 412 nm. The flow rate and column oven temperature were kept at 1 ml/min and 30°C, respectively. The retention times for curcumin and chlorin e6 were found to be 11.7 and 13.5 min, respectively. The simultaneous technique was used to estimate the %drug entrapment efficiency, drug loading, as well as the cumulative percentage of drug release of chlorin e6 and curcumin in‐house designed nanoformulations. %Drug loading and entrapment efficiency were found to be 2.22% and 79.92% for curcumin, while 2.43% and 89.47% for chlorin e6, respectively.