Electrochemical study of flutamide, an anticancer drug, and its polarographic, UV spectrophotometric and HPLC determination in tablets

Flutamide, 4-nitro-3-trifluoromethyl-isobutylanilide a synthetic antiandrogenic with therapeutic use in prostatic cancer, is electrochemically studied to propose a new electroanalytical alternative for its quantitative determination in pharmaceutical forms. Flutamide is shown to be electrochemically reducible in aqueous and mixed media, due to the presence of the nitroaromatic moiety in the molecule. From the mixed media studies, a nitro radical anion derivative from flutamide is described. From the pH dependence of the polarographic peak an apparent pK(a) of 4.8 was obtained and corroborated by means of UV spectroscopy. Based on the linear relation between the peak current and the flutamide concentrations a differential pulse polarographic method was developed. For comparative purposes spectrophotometric and HPLCUV methodologies were developed. Furthermore the developed methods were checked for selectivity using hydrolysis, photolysis, thermolysis and chemical oxidation.