Current trends and challenges in the mitoxantrone measuring in biofluids and new pharmaceutical systems

Adaptation of medical treatment to a particular patient requires the monitoring the concentration of active substances or biomarkers in the body during medical treatment. When studying the individual therapeutic effect of chemotherapeutic drugs, fast simple methods for their determining are needed. It is especially important to control the concentration of cytostatics because of their high toxicity. The task of determining the concentration of cytostatics is important for biofluids and tissues, as well as for the design and validation of prolonged release systems, which are actively used and developed to reduce the toxic effect of cytostatics. However, the determination of such agents, especially anthracycline antibiotics, is complicated by their high propensity to absorption on biomolecules, forms variability, and sensitivity to media properties. This review critically considers existing methods for the determination of one of the anthracycline antibiotics, mitoxantrone (MTX), and the application of these methods for monitoring of MTX concentration.