Sensitive determination of docetaxel in human plasma by liquid–liquid extraction and reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography

A sensitive reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method has been developed and validated for the quantitative determination of docetaxel (I) in human plasma. The concentrations in plasma, for validation procedures spiked with known amounts of I, are read from calibration curves in the range of 10–20 000 ng/ml. The sample preparation involved a liquid–liquid extraction of 1000 μl of sample with a mixture of acetonitrile–n-butylchloride (1:4, v/v). The related compound paclitaxel (II) was used as internal standard. Chromatographic separations were performed an Inertsil ODS-80A column, with UV detection performed at 230 nm. The overall extraction recoveries were 84.3 and 90.0% for I and II, respectively. The lower limit of quantitation was 10 ng/ml, and the accuracy, within-run and between-run precisions at three tested concentrations fell within the generally accepted criteria for bioanalytical assays.