Determination of alectinib and its active metabolite in plasma by pipette-tip solid-phase extraction using porous polydopamine graphene oxide adsorbent coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet detection.

• New porous polydopamine/graphene oxide composite adsorbents were prepared. • Polydopamine acts as a synergistic adsorbent rather than just a modification layer. • Pipette-tip solid-phase extraction using the composite adsorbent was developed. • Simultaneous determination of alectinib and its metabolite in plasma was achieved. • The PDAG can be as a new adsorbent to extract weakly polar anticancer drugs. Alectinib is known as an effective targeted drug, which has excellent therapeutic effect on non-small cell lung cancer and can significantly prolong the survival of patients. Therapeutic drug monitoring is necessary due to the photo-instability of alectinib and the individual differences in patients. In this work, a porous polydopamine graphene oxide composite (PDAG) was prepared by a simple surface modification method. A PDAG-based pipette-tip solid-phase extraction (PT-SPE) coupled with HPLC-UV detection was proposed for the separation and detection of alectinib and its active metabolite M4 in plasma. The method was methodologically validated and showed good linearity in the range of 50–5000 ng mL−1 (R 2 > 0.9995). The limit of detection (LOD) was 4.8 ng mL−1 and 3.9 ng mL−1 for alectinib and M4, respectively, and the limit of quantitation (LOQ) was 16.1 ng mL−1 and 13.1 ng mL−1, respectively. The intra-day and inter-day precision expressed by coefficient of variation was less than 4.8 %. The recovery of this method ranged from 84.9 % to 103.5 % with a standard deviation of less than 4.3 %. In conclusion, the established method is accurate, stable and inexpensive, and can be used to monitor the levels of alectinib and M4 in plasma, which provide technical and data support for exploring optimal individualized remedial dosing regimens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]