Ultra-high performance hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography – Triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry method for determination of cysteine, homocysteine, cysteinyl-glycine and glutathione in rat plasma

•We developed UHPLC/MS method for determination of cysteine, cysteine, homocysteine, cysteinyl-glycine, glutathione in rat plasma.•Method is fast, easy, sensitive, has good accuracy, precision and extraction recovery.•We used this method for analysis of plasma from rat model for tauopathy.•We discovered significant changes of glutathione and homocysteine which correlates with pathology. An ultra-high performance hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography – triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry method was developed for the determination of biologically important thiols, namely cysteine, homocysteine, cysteinyl-glycine, glutathione, in rat plasma. The sample preparation procedure as well as the analytical method were comprehensively optimized and subsequently validated. An optimum sample preparation protocol was based on the simple and fast derivatization of the thiols with new derivatization reagent, N-phenylmaleimide, enabling highly selective and sensitive quantification in plasma matrices. The method, characterized by favourable performance parameters and meeting the FDA criteria for biomedical analysis, was successfully applied for monitoring the concentration levels of the selected thiols in the samples from transgenic rat model for tauopathy. The study revealed significant changes in homocysteine and glutathione levels related to tauopathy while other thiols did not indicate such relationship. Indeed, these findings could play an important role in further understanding of tauopathy process in the brain. Moreover, the proposed highly effective, reliable and robust analytical protocol can be easily adapted for other thiol compounds, spreading its application range in this biomedical field.