Development and Application of an HPLC Method for Erlotinib Protein Binding Studies

The aim of the present study was to develop a simple and rapid reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatographic method with UV detection for erlotinib hydrochloride quantification, which is applicable for protein binding studies. Ultrafilteration method was used for protein binding study of erlotinib hydrochloride. For sample analysis a simple and rapid reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatographic method with UV detection at 332 nm was developed. The mobile phase was a mixture of methanol, acetonitril and potassium dihydrogen phosphate buffer (15:45:40 %v/v) set at flow rate of 1.3 ml/min. The run time for erlotinib hydrochloride was approximately 6 minutes. The calibration curve was linear over the range of 320-20000 ng/ml with acceptable intra- and inter-day precision and accuracy. The intra-day and inter-day precisions were less than 10% and the accuracies of intra and inter-day assays were within the range of 97.20-104.83% and 98.8-102.2% respectively. Based on the obtained results, a simple, accurate and precise reversed-phase isocratic HPLC method with UV detection has been optimized and validated for the determination of erlotinib hydrochloride in biological samples.