In situ green analytical methods for the rapid and sensitive determination of a newly launched orphan anticancer drug; Tigecycline in infusion bags: comparative study

Background Tigecycline (TIG), an antimicrobial agent indicated for complex bacterial infections, is now approved by FDA as an orphan chemotherapeutic agent for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia due to its inhibitory effects on pathways of activating, signaling and abnormal mitochondrial function in cancer cells. TIG is mainly administered as intravenous infusion through centralized unit of oncology centers. This necessitates the continuous analytical quality control of the prepared solution in order to identify and quantify TIG for safe intravenous administration to patients. Moreover, the clinical staff exposure risk to toxic drugs during daily handling must be considered. Such concerns require a fast, cost-effective and green analytical procedure for sensitive determination of TIG directly in infusion bags. In this work, we propose a simple, rapid and green capillary zone electrophoretic (CZE) method for the sensitive assay of TIG directly in infusion bags, in addition to three simple and green spectrophotometric methods. Results TIG solutions corresponding to clinical ranges were detected in 5%glucose. Validation of all the proposed methods was according to ICH guidelines. Greenness assessment was performed depending on Green Analytical Procedure Index (GAPI) and the Eco-scale approach which showed that the proposed methods are better eco-friendly methods than reported ones. It also revealed the superiority of our proposed methods in terms of simplicity and sensitivity for TIG determination in infusion bags. Quantification limits obtained were significantly lower than the administered range of TIG in infusion bags and lower than its maximum serum concentration (C-max). This promotes the application of the proposed methods for the pharmacokinetics and bioavailability studies of TIG in various biological fluids. Conclusions This work reports, for the first time, CZE method for the direct and rapid determination of TIG and its separation from other components in intravenous infusion solution. The developed CZE method has several advantages over current chromatographic methods such as higher efficiency of separation within short analysis time, consumption of fewer quantities of chemicals and offering better resolution than HPLC. Moreover, three green spectrophotometric methods are also proposed for TIG determination that offer many advantages such as accuracy, precision, simplicity, specificity and facility of quantification and separation of the selected drug in infusion bags and pharmaceutical preparations without any techniques for extraction.