The absolute bioavailability investigation of LS177 in rats using ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.

LS177 is a novel inhibitor of mesenchymal epithelial transition (MET) that was used as an anticancer agent. The present study was to evaluate the absolute bioavailability of LS177 in rats. A rapid and sensitive ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) method has been developed and validated for the determination of LS177 in rat plasma. LS177 and internal standard (IS, LS410) were extracted from rat plasma samples by protein precipitation (PPT) for intravenous group and liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) procedure for oral group, then separated on a Phenomenex Kinetex XB-C-18 (2.1mm I.D. x 50mm, 2.6 mu m) using a mobile phase consisting of 0.1% formic acid in acetonitrile-0.1% formic acid water with a gradient elution program. The standard curves were linear over the ranges of 5.0-2000.0ngmL(-1) for PPT and 1.0-200.0ngmL(-1) for LLE. The mean recovery of LS177 was greater than 83.4% for PPT and not less than 88.5% for LLE, respectively. The intra- and inter-day accuracy and precision were within the acceptable limits of less than 15.0% at all concentrations. The validated method was successfully applied to the bioavailability study in rat plasma of LS177 and its absolute bioavailability was 25.37%. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.