The development of new therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) methods is an area of intense research activity. This is due to the need to develop low-dose multi-drug regimens, the importance of assessing inter- and intra-individual metabolism variability, and the necessity of determining the narrow therapeutic concentration ranges of drugs. As a result, a growing number of research laboratories are turning to LC/MS/MS to analyze immunosuppressants, antiretroviral, anticonvulsive and antipsychotic drugs.
Application example: Immunosuppressant drugs such as Cyclosporin A, Tacrolimus, Sirolimus, Everolimus and Mycophenolic acid are often administered combined in a cocktail for reinforcing their therapeutic effectiveness with minimal side effects. The following example illustrates how researchers used a simple and robust LC/MS/MS two-dimensional method and an AB SCIEX system to quickly identify and quantify these immunosuppressant drugs in blood samples for their research project. The method was shown to be cost effective and highly robust, with minimal sample preparation and without compromising the precision and accuracy.
Simultaneous determination of four immunosuppressant drugs in 100 μL of blood using an AB SCIEX LC/MS/MS system. Acknowledgements to Dr. Therese Koal, from the Medical School Hannover, Germany, for providing the samples and data.