A simple and sensitive HPLC-UV method for the determination of swainsonine in rat plasma and its application in a pharmacokinetic study

A simple, rapid, selective and sensitive HPLC-UV method was developed and validated for the determination of swainsonine (SWSN) in rat plasma. The analyte was extracted from rat plasma with methanol as the extraction solvent. The LC separation was performed on a Diamonsil® C18 (250×4.6 mm, 5 µm) analytical column with a mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile-potassium dihydrogen phosphate (25 mmol/l, pH=7.5) at a flow rate of 1.0 ml/min. There was a good linearity over the range of 10-500 ng/ml (r=0.9995) with a weighted (1/C2) least square method. The lower limit of quantification was proved to be 10 ng/ml. The accuracy was within 4.8% in terms of relative error and the intra- and inter-day precisions were less than 9.0% in terms of relative standard deviation. After validation, the method was successfully applied to characterize the pharmacokinetics of SWSN in rats.