Development and Validation of an LC–MS/MS Method for Determination of Tigecycline and Its Epimer in Human Plasma and Its Application in a Pharmacokinetic Study

A rapid, selective, sensitive, and simple method for simultaneous determination of tigecycline and its epimer in human plasma samples was developed and validated by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS). Sample preparation involved one-step protein precipitation by adding 0.1% formic acid–methanol and phosphate buffer (PB) solution to the plasma. Chromatographic separation was obtained with XBridge BEH C18 column (3.5 μm, 50 × 4.6 mm) through a 9.5-min gradient mobile phase at the flow rate of 0.6 mL min−1 at 4 °C. The calibration curves were linear over concentration 5.00–2000 ng mL−1 with correlation coefficient greater than 0.998. Intra-batch and inter-batch accuracy of the assay were in the ranges of −2.90% to 3.00%, and the corresponding precision was less than 6.97%. The extraction recovery of tigecycline and its epimer with the current method were 87.2% and 76.9%, respectively. The applied LC–MS/MS method was shown to be sufficiently sensitive and will be suitable for pharmacoki...