Development and Validation of a Sensitive UHPLC-MS/MS Method for the Measurement of Gardneramine in Rat Plasma and Tissues and Its Application to Pharmacokinetics and Tissue Distribution Study

As a novel monoterpenoid indole alkaloid, gardneramine has been confirmed to possess excellent nervous depressive effects. However, there have been no reports about the measurement of gardneramine in vitro and in vivo. The motivation of this study was to establish and validate a specific, sensitive, and robust analytical method based on UHPLC-MS/MS for quantification of gardneramine in rat plasma and various tissues after intravenous administration. The analyte was extracted from plasma and tissue samples by protein precipitation with methanol using theophylline as an internal standard (I.S.). The analytes were separated on an Agilent ZORBAX Eclipse Plus C(18) column using a gradient elution of acetonitrile and 0.1% formic acid in water at a flow rate of 0.3 mL/min. Gardneramine and I.S. were detected and quantified using positive electrospray ionization in multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode with transitions of m/z 413.1→217.9 for gardneramine and m/z 181.2→124.1 for I.S. Perfect linearity range was 1–2000 ng/mL with a correlation coefficient (r(2)) of ≥0.990. The lower limit of quantification (LLOQ) of 1.0 ng/mL was adequate for application to different preclinical studies. The method was successfully applied for determination of gardneramine in bio-samples.