Simultaneous quantitation of delamanid (OPC-67683) and its eight metabolites in human plasma using UHPLC–MS/MS

•Delamanid (OPC-67683) is a new drug developed to treat tuberculosis (TB).•An UHPLC–MS/MS method was developed to quantify delamanid and its eight metabolites.•This method has been used to support multiple regulated clinic studies. Delamanid (OPC-67683) is a novel nitro-dihydroimidazo-oxazole derivative that is being developed by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Japan (referred to as Otsuka hereafter) for the treatment of tuberculosis (TB). An ultra-high performance liquid chromatographic–tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC–MS/MS) method has been developed and validated for the determination of OPC-67683 and its eight metabolites, DM-6704, DM-6705, DM-6706, DM-6717, DM-6718, DM-6720, DM-6721 and DM-6722 in human plasma to support regulated clinical development. During method development several technical challenges such as poor chromatography, separation of structural isomers, conversion of the analytes, instability in matrix and long cycle time were encountered and overcome. A protein precipitation extraction (PPE) was used to extract plasma samples (50μL) and the resulting extracts were analyzed using reversed phase UHPLC–MS/MS with a electrospray (ESI) and selected reaction monitoring (SRM). The method was fully validated over the calibration curve range of 1.00–500ng/mL for all nine analytes with linear regression and 1/x2 weighting according to regulatory guidance for bioanalysis. Based on three inter-day precision and accuracy runs, the between-run % relative standard deviation (RSD) for all nine analytes varied from 0.0 to 11.9% and the accuracy ranged from 92.7% to 102.5% of nominal at all quality controls (QC) concentrations, including the lower limit of quantitation (LLOQ) QC at 1.00ng/mL. The extraction recovery of OPC-67683 and its eight metabolites were above 95%. Various short term and long term solution and matrix stability were established including the stability of OPC-67683 and its eight metabolites in human plasma for 708 days at −70°C. Although this method has been used to support regulated clinic studies during the last decade and over ten thousand samples have been analyzed, this is the first time that the method development process and validation data have been published.