A general procedure is presented for the determination of several N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor open-channel and subtype-selective blockers, which have been evaluated and developed as neuroprotective drugs for the treatment of brain stroke and trauma. The method involves deproteination of plasma with ethanol, or homogenization of brain samples in ethanol, dilution of the supernatant with ammonium acetate and direct injection into an HPLC column-switching system. Although the investigated NMDA receptor blockers are all tertiary amines, they have quite different structures. However, they are all concentrated on the first column (Purospher RP-18, 125x4 mm), whereas polar interfering compounds are washed out with 1% ammonium acetate-acetic acid-acetonitrile (100:1:5, v/v/v). Due to the special selectivity of the Purospher RP-18 material, the analytes and the internal standard are then selectively eluted with 25% acetonitrile (without any buffer in the mobile phase) and transferred to the analytical column (Superspher 60 RP-select B, 250x4 mm), where they are separated by gradient elution and detected by UV or fluorescence detection. The low degree of interference allowed the development of sensitive methods with quantification limits of 5 ng/ml for animal plasma (0.4 mi used), 0.5 ng/ml for human plasma (1 mi used) and 50 ng/g for brain tissue (200 mg used). (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.
