Development of a validated LC-MS/MS method for the in vitro and in vivo quantitation of sunitinib in glioblastoma cells and cancer patients

•A cost-effective and rapid bioanalytical method for quantitation of sunitinib.•A simple protein precipitation step is used in the sample preparation.•The method has high sensitivity with LLOQ at 0.1 ng mL−1.•The method was validated according to Eurachem guidelines.•It has been applied to quantify sunitinib levels in cancer patients and cancer cells. Sunitinib is a multi-targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor approved for the treatment of renal cell carcinoma and imatinib-resistant gastrointestinal stromal tumor and is currently being investigated against other forms of malignant tumors. Recently great interest has emerged for the application of sunitinib to glioblastoma treatment. In order to have a method with broad applicability it will be of importance to have access to a method that could be applied both in human plasma and cell uptake studies. No method has been reported thus far for the estimation of sunitinib uptake in glioma cells. We therefore set out to develop a method that could be applied for quantifying sunitinib in human plasma and in cell uptake studies. The method was validated and accredited according to ISO 17025:2005 guideline in human plasma and successfully applied to cancer patient plasma. Also, the method was effectively recruited to establish a protocol for the evaluation of sunitinib accumulation into M095K glioma cells. This method could significantly contribute to developmental phases in repurposing this drug in different cancer types.