Quantitative analysis of costunolide and dehydrocostuslactone in rat plasma by ultraperformance liquid chromatography–electrospray ionization–mass spectrometry

Abstract

Costunolide and dehydrocostuslactone are well-known sesquiterpene lactones contained in many plants used as popular herbs, such as Saussurea lappa and Laurus novocanariensis, and have been considered as potential candidates for the treatment of various types of tumor. In the present work, a sensitive UPLC-MS/MS for the quantification of costunolide and dehydrocostuslactone in biological matrices has been developed. The method is based on protein precipitation with acetonitrile followed by isocratic ultraperformance liquid chromatographic separation using methanol-formic acid (0.1% in water; 70:30, v/v) mobile phase. Detection was performed by ESI mass spectrometry in MRM mode with the precursor-to-product ion transitions m/z 233-187 and m/z 231-185, respectively. The calibration curves of analytes showed good linearity within the established range 0.19-760 ng/mL for costunolide and 0.23-908 ng/mL for dehydrocostuslactone. The lower limits of quantification of costunolide and dehydrocostuslactone were found to be 0.19 and 0.23 ng/mL, respectively. The intra-day and inter-day presicions of this method for the entire validation were less than coefficient of variation of 7% and the accuracy was within ±8% (relative error). The mean extraction recoveries were 73.8 and 75.3%, respectively. The method was found to be precise, accurate and specific during the study, and was successfully used to analyze the pharmacokinetics of costunolide and dehydrocostuslactone.

Simultaneous determination of kaempferol, quercetin, mangiferin, gallic acid, p‐hydroxybenzoic acid and chlorpheniramine maleate in rat plasma after oral administration of Mang‐Guo‐Zhi‐Ke tablets by UHPLC‐MS/MS and its application to pharmacokinetics

“…The individual and mean plasma concentration curves of kaempferol and quercetin presented a double‐peak absorption phase. A similar phenomenon was also reported in a previous pharmacokinetic study of flavonoids (Hu et al, ; Wang et al, ). Enterohepatic recirculation, variable gastric emptying and distribution, and re‐absorption as possible interpretations would contribute to the phenomenon of double‐peak behavior (Deng et al, ).…”

Study on the pharmacokinetics and metabolism of costunolide and dehydrocostus lactone in rats by HPLC‐UV and UPLC‐Q‐TOF/MS

“…According to the results of Hu et al . (), the values of C max of Cos and Dehy in rat plasma were 0.024 and 0.067 µg/mL, and the values of AUC (0–∞) of Cos and Dehy were 0.331 and 1.09 µg h/mL, respectively after oral administration at doses of 25 mg/kg (Cos) and 100 mg/kg (Dehy) body weight. The pharmacokinetic properties were dose‐dependent, with a linear increase in the AUC and C max with increasing dose (Canga et al ., ).…”

“…The pharmacokinetics of Cos and Dehy in rats after single oral administration have been investigated (Hu et al ., ). Cos and Dehy are very poorly absorbed by rats after oral administration because of their poor water solubility.…”

Simultaneous determination of three sesquiterpene lactones from Herba Inula extract in rat plasma by LC/MS/MS and its application to pharmacokinetic study

“…Three papers reported the assay of three compounds' analogs, atractylenolide I, atractylenolide II and atractylenolide III in vivo [14][15][16], which have similar effects [17][18][19] of the three compounds we have analyzed in this paper. Furthermore, there's one paper reporting the determination of costunolide and dehydrocostuslactone [20], the well know sesquiterpene lactones, in rat plasma recently. Since sesquiterpene lactones have various biological activities and more new compounds [5,11] will be isolated, there's a need to learn more metabolic behaviors of them for the further study.…”