Simultaneous determination of deuterated vortioxetine and its major metabolite in human plasma by UPLC-MS/MS and application to a pharmacokinetic study in healthy volunteers

JJH201501, a deuterated modification for multi-target antidepressant vortioxetine, is currently in phase clinical trial. This study aimed to establish a sensitive and rapid UPLC-MS/MS method that was capable of simultaneously detecting JJH201501 and its major metabolite JJH201501-01 quantitatively in human plasma. The pretreatment was achieved by protein precipitation using 4-fold(v:v) acetonitrile with 5 ng/mL fluoxetine as internal standard precipitant. For method validation, the method was investigated in terms of the selectivity, inter- and intra-run precision and accuracy, carryover, matrix effect, extraction recovery and stability. The total running time was 3 min, and the retention time of JJH201501 and JJH201501-01 was 1.17 min and 1.05 min, respectively. The linear concentration range for JJH201501 and JJH201501-01 was 0.2 to 50 ng/mL and 0.4 to 100 ng/mL, respectively. The results showed that this method was in line with the guidelines for bioanalytical method proposed by FDA. In addition, the method was successfully applied to a plasma pharmacokinetic study of JJH201501 tablets in healthy volunteers which was part of the phase I trial.