A Rapid and Precise Liquid Chromatographic Method for Simultaneous Determination of Alpha Lipoic Acid and Docetaxel in Lipid-Based Nanoformulations

Abstract

Combinational drug delivery successfully merges the benefits of nanotechnology and combination therapy by providing diversity to improve the carrier properties and better control over tailoring them as per the need of cancer treatment. A combination of conventional chemotherapeutic agent; docetaxel (DTX) and antioxidant agent; alpha lipoic acid (ALA) which acts by preventing metastasis may fulfill idealness of control and targeted drug delivery against breast cancer. The objective of the current study is to develop a reverse-phase HPLC-UV method for simultaneous determination of DTX and ALA in lipid-based nanoformulations. DTX and ALA were separated on Intersil® ODS (C18) column (250 × 4.6 mm, 5 μm) with a mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile: sodium acetate buffer (pH 3.5; 10 mM) (65:35% v/v) run in isocratic mode at a flow rate of 1 mL/min. The developed method was validated as per ICH guidelines. The method showed linearity in the concentration range of 1–15 μg/mL for DTX and 2–30 μg/mL for ALA. It can detect minimum 200 ng/mL of DTX and 500 ng/mL of ALA. The method was further successfully applied in lipid-based formulation characterization. In conclusion, a simple, accurate and precise reverse-phase HPLC-UV method was established for simultaneous determination of DTX and ALA in nanoformulations.