High-performance liquid chromatographic determination of mitoxantrone in plasma utilizing non-bonded silica gel for solid-phase isolation to reduce adsorptive losses on glass during sample preparation

Mitoxantrone, a highly active antineoplastic agent, was found to bind strongly to non-bonded silica gel and glassware. When a Hamilton syringe was used to load and inject a mitoxantrone solution (0.4 microgram/ml in water) on to a high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) system, about 95% of the loaded compound was found to bind to the glass surface of the syringe barrel and could not be removed by rinsing with water. It could, however, be removed slowly with an acidic solution and thus a small peak of mitoxantrone was present on the chromatogram whenever a blank acidic solution was injected with the syringe. The bound mitoxantrone could be removed effectively from the syringe surface with a solution of tetramethylammonium chloride, citric acid, methanol and water (elution solvent). This binding introduces a large error in assay results and might be one of the major factors responsible for contradictory pharmacokinetic data that have been reported. A new plasma preparation scheme and an HPLC method for mitoxantrone were developed to address this binding problem. Mitoxantrone was extracted directly from plasma samples with a plastic mini-column packed with non-bonded silica gel and eluted with the above elution solvent. The eluent was analysed by HPLC on an ODS column with an absorbance detector at 658 nm. The mobile phase was 0.1 M triethylamine phosphate (pH 3.0) in water-tetrahydrofuran-methanol (69:1:30) containing 0.02 M tetramethylammonium chloride. Methylene blue was added as an internal standard. Preliminary results showed that mitoxantrone levels in human plasma followed a triphasic decay curve after an intravenous bolus injection. The terminal elimination half-lives measured in three patients (mean t1/2 gamma = 25 min) were all shorter than the published values which ranged from 56 min to 9 days.