SPE-UPLC-MS/MS assay for determination of letrozole in human plasma and its application to bioequivalence study in healthy postmenopausal Indian women

A rapid and sensitive ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry（UPLC-MS/MS） method is described for determination of letrozole in human plasma.Following solid phase extraction（SPE） of letrozole and letrozole-d4 on Orochem DVB-LP cartridges,chromatography was performed on Acquity UPLC BEH C;（50 mm × 2.1 mm.1.7 μm） column using methanol-0.1%formic acid in water（85:15,v/v） as the mobile phase.Detection was carried out on a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer with an electrospray source,operated under positive ionization mode.Quantitation of letrozole and letrozole-d4 was done using multiple reaction monitoring（MRM） following the transitions at m/z286.2→217.0 and m/z 290.2→221.0,respectively.The calibration plots were linear through the concentration range of 0.10-100 ng/mL（r;≥ 0.9990） using 100 μL human plasma.The extraction recovery of letrozole ranged from 94.3%to 96.2%and the intra-batch and inter-batch precision was ≤ 5.2%.The method was successfully applied to a bioequivalence study of letrozole after oral administration of2.5 mg tablet formulation to 16 healthy postmenopausal Indian women.The assay reproducibility was also established through incurred sample reanalysis（ISR） of 74 subject samples.