HPLC-DAD technique for the quantification of a recently approved anti-diabetic triple combination along with two toxic official impurities: Toxicity confirmation aided by molecular docking application

BACKGROUND: Gliflozins and gliptins are two distinct groups of pharmacological drugs that reduce blood glucose levels in individuals with type II diabetes in various ways that may perform their functions harmoniously. Trijardy(®) tablet, which contains empagliflozin, linagliptin, and metformin, was recently approved. The scientific database does not yet have a method that is sensitive enough to quantify the aforementioned medications in the presence of metformin official toxic impurities melamine and cyanoguanidine. Molecular docking modeling was utilized in this work to further prove the toxicity of melamine. METHODS: The five analytes listed before were quantified using RP-HPLC-diode array detector and a Zorbax(®) C8 column (4.6 × 250 mm, 5 μm) with isocratic mobile phase composed of acetonitrile and 0.05 M potassium dihydrogen phosphate buffer, which had been treated by ?-phosphoric acid to restore a pH of 4.0 (90:10, v/v) at a flow rate of 1.2 mL/min and the eluted peaks were scanned at 250 nm. CONCLUSION: The utilization of the simplest isocratic elution mode give the current technique a significant time-and cost-saving benefit. The current method can quantify the triple therapy agents in the presence of each other as well as with two official toxic impurities of metformin in one short analytical run. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13065-023-00927-0.