Development of a rapid UPLC-MS/MS method for the determination of toddalolactone in mouse blood and its application in pharmacokinetics

A rapid and simple UPLC-MS/MS method was developed to determine toddalolactone in mouse blood and applied to measure the pharmacokinetics of toddalolactone in mice. Blood samples were first preprocessed by ethyl acetate liquid-liquid extraction. Oxypeucedanin hydrate (internal standard, IS) and toddalolactone were gradient eluted from a UPLC BEH C18 column using a mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile and water (0.1% formic acid). Using electrospray ionization (ESI) as the ionization source, multiple reaction monitoring was used to detect the precursor and product ions of m/z 309.2 and 205.2, respectively, for toddalolactone and of m/z 305.1 and 203.0 for IS, respectively, for quantitative detection. A calibration curve was run over the concentration range of 5–4,000 ng/mL ( r > 0.995). The matrix effects ranged from 93.5 to 98.4%, and the recovery was higher than 77.3%. The precision was less than 13%, and the accuracy ranged from 90.9 to 108.4%. The developed UPLC-MS/MS method was successfully used for measuring the pharmacokinetics of toddalolactone in mice after oral (20 mg/kg) and intravenous administration (5 mg/kg), and the absolute bioavailability of toddalolactone was 22.4%.