A liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometric method for quantification of curcuminoids in cell medium and mouse plasma

Curcumin and tetrahydrocurcumin (THC) have been found as potent DNMT1 inhibitors, but they suffer from low oral bioavailability and rapid metabolism in vivo. To circumvent these problems, two curcumin analogs: 1,7-bis(3,4-dimethoxyphenyl)-4,4-dimethyl-1,6-heptadiene-3,5-dione (TMC) and 1,7-bis(3,4-dimethoxyphenyl)-4-cyclohexyl-1,6-heptadiene-3,5-dione (DMCHC) have been synthesized to enhance their stability by blocking the two metabolic sites, the phenolic and C4 methylene moieties. Both compounds have shown inhibitory activity on M. SssI similar to that of curcumin and THC (Poster, M1114, AAPS, 2009). Preclinical pharmacokinetics has yet to be performed. In this paper, a simple liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometric method was developed for the determination of these four curcuminoids in cell medium and mouse plasma. The method showed linearity from 1 to 1000 ng/mL with the lower limit of quantification of 1 ng/mL in cell medium, and 5 ng/mL in mouse plasma for all test curcuminoids. The within-day coefficients of variation were found to be below 15% and the accuracy was in the range of 85-115%. This method was subsequently used to evaluate their stability in these matrices and a pilot pharmacokinetics of curcumin, DMCHC and TMC in mice after an intraperitoneal (i.p.) cassette dosing of 10mg/kg each. Curcuminoids degraded in two phases with terminal half lives of 186, 813, 724, and 2000 min for curcumin, THC, TMC, and DMCHC, respectively, in cell culture medium. In plasma, their respective half lives were 111, 232, 1202 and 3000 min. These data demonstrated that their stability is in the order curcumin