Favipiravir (FVP), a pyrazine analog, has shown antiviral activity against a wide variety of viruses. It is considered to be worth further investigation as a potential candidate drug for COVID-19. It is not officially available in any pharmacopoeia. A rapid, simple, precise, accurate, and isocratic high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method has been developed for routine quality control of favipiravir in pharmaceutical formulations. Separation was carried out by C18 column. The mobile phase was a mixture of 50 mM potassium dihydrogen phosphate (pH 2.3) and acetonitrile (90:10, v/v) at a flow rate of 1 mL min−1. The ultraviolet (UV) detection and column temperature were 323 nm, and 30 °C, respectively. The run time was 15 min under these chromatographic conditions. Excellent linear relationship between peak area and favipiravir concentration in the range of 10–100 μg mL−1 has been observed (r2, 0.9999). Developed method has been found to be sensitive (limits of detection and quantification were 1.20 μg mL−1 and 3.60 μg mL−1, respectively), precise (the interday and intraday relative standard deviation (RSD) values for peak area and retention time were less than 0.4 and 0.2%, respectively), accurate (recovery, 99.19–100.17%), specific and robust (% RSD were less than 1.00, for system suitability parameters). Proposed method has been successfully applied for quantification of favipiravir in pharmaceutical formulations.

In this study, amount of morphine from poppy capsules (Papaver somniferum) was investigated using ultrasonic assisted extraction (UAE). Response surface methodology was used to estimate effective experimental conditions on the content extraction of poppy capsules. For this purpose, solvent/solid ratio (10–20 mL/500 mg sample), pH (1–13), time (30–60 min), and temperature (30–50°C) were chosen as experimental variables. The affected response is extraction recovery values for morphine from poppy straw. For interpreting the relationship between experimental factors and response, a design table was established with combinations of three different concentrations levels of this compound in 29 trials. The second order quadratic model gave a satisfactory description of the experimental data. In our study, R-Squared (0.96), Adj-R-Squared (0.92), and Pred R-Squared (0.78) values for extraction yield display good accuracy of the derived model. The predicted optimal conditions for the highest morphine level (3.38 mg morphine/500 mg-sample) were found at 19.99 mL solvent/500 mg solid ratio, 59.94 min extraction time, 1.10 pH, and 42.36°C temperature. In the optimal extraction conditions, the experimental values are very close to the predicted values. Consequently, the response surface modeling can be achieved sufficiently to predict extraction yield from poppy straw by ultrasound assisted extraction.

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An easy 2-step method for the synthesis of the water-soluble singlet oxygen trap AES has been developed. The method is based on a novel Heck reaction with sodium vinylsulfonate followed by vinyl hydrogenation. It is shown that the Heck product AVS is also suitable as a water-soluble and colored singlet oxygen trap that allows singlet oxygen to be detected specifically and simply by visual inspection. The cumulative amount of 1 O 2 generated into the solution can be determined unambiguously by measuring the concentration of the endoperoxides AVSO 2 or AESO 2 by HPLC or by 1 H NMR.