Bleomycin is a mixture of cytotoxic glycopeptide antibiotics isolated from a strain of Streptomyces verticillus. It is efficient in treatment of many neoplastic tissues. Nevertheless, bleomycin has side effects, mostly on pulmonary tissue. Consequently, bleomycin blood level should be monitored. Because of structure complexity, polarity and ability to chelate metals it is very difficult to set sensitive and selective analytical method for its determination in biological tissues.
In our work, we tried to optimize the method which was developed in following research Kosjek et al. Mostly with goal to transfer solid phase extraction from cartridge where we used low pressure to microplates under high pressure, which are more appropriate for extraction of multiple biological samples.
The goal was to simplify sample preparation, reduce time and increase efficiency of extraction of bleomycin from samples. The method was successfully transferred although efficiency of bleomycin extraction on microplate was lower. Within microplate we optimized composition of the elution solvent. Additionally, we tried to shorten the process with direct injection of blood samples after denaturation and centrifugation without the extraction using SPE microplates step. Results were relevant only for serum samples. Better results were with lower volume samples than higher volume samples. In mass spectrometer bleomycin detection is suppressed by matrix, especially in higher volume serum samples. Suppression is even greater in plasma samples, which is why we decided that it is not appropriate for direct injection.
We optimised the method for extraction of bleomycin from serum and tumor tissue and evaluated how mass of tissue and volume of biological sample influence to the mass detector response. In validation process we followed U.S Food and drug administration guidelines where this was reasonable and possible. Due to the poor robustness of internal standard in chromatography we decided that it is not suitable for this task. The working range of analytical method for serum is from 100 ng/mL to 5000 ng/mL and for tumor tissue from 50 to 2500 ng/g.
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