Enantioselective analyses of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in rat liver microsomes through chiral liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry

Abstract An efficient, sensitive and selective liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) chiral analysis method was established for determination of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine enantiomers in rat liver microsomes. Effects of polysaccharide chiral stationary phases and basic additives on chiral separations of two analytes were discussed in detail. Amylose tris(3, 5‐dimethylphenylcarbamate)‐coated chiral stationary phase showed the best separation performance for them with acetonitrile‐diethylamine‐ethanol‐diethylamine mixture (90:0.1:10:0.1, v/v/v/v) among four chiral stationary phases. Then, multiple reaction monitoring mode was selected as the data acquisition for determination of two pairs of enantiomers. The proposed LC–MS/MS chiral analysis method was validated in terms of linearity, accuracy, precision, and specificity. Good linearity with correlation coefficient over 0.998 was obtained in the concentration range of 0.05–5 μM. Limits of quantification for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine enantiomers were 5.0 and 1.0 nM, respectively. The recoveries ranged from 81.14% to 111.09%. The intra‐day and inter‐day relative standard deviation were less than 6.5%. Moreover, concentrations of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine enantiomers in rat liver microsomes were determined through the proposed LC–MS/MS analysis method. After incubated with rat liver microsomes for 10 min, the enantiomeric factor of hydroxychloroquine decreased from 0.50 to 0.45 ( p < 0.001). In brief, our developed determination method for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine enantiomers through LC–MS/MS spectrometry showed the characteristics of high‐efficiency, fast speed, and very low detection limit, and would be greatly beneficial for screening and quantitation of them in biological matrices.