title: Simultaneous determination of cytosine arabinoside, its nucleotides and metabolites by ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatography.
abstract: Currently available high-performance liquid chromatographic assays for cytosine arabinoside (ara-C) and its metabolites suffer from two major shortcomings: inability to resolve both ara-C and its nucleotides in a single chromatographic step and/or inadequate sensitivity to allow quantitation of intracellular cytosine arabinofuranoside-5'-triphosphate (ara-CTP) without the use of radiolabelled drug. In this paper, we describe a new ion-pairing high-performance liquid chromatographic assay for ara-C in biological samples that can separate ara-C from its nucleotides, metabolites, and naturally occurring ribonucleotides in a single chromatographic step with a lower limit of quantitation of 5 pmol for ara-C and 10 pmol for ara-CTP. Examples of the utility of this assay are shown in studies of intracellular pharmacokinetics of ara-C in cultured human breast cancer cells and in analysis of plasma nucleoside levels in patients receiving high-dose thymidine chemotherapy. We conclude that this assay provides a rapid and versatile system that can be applied to the study of both cellular and plasma nucleoside pharmacokinetics.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid / Q000379:methods; D003561:Cytarabine / Q000031:analogs & derivatives / Q000032:analysis* / Q000097:blood; D004285:Dogs; D009711:Nucleotides / Q000032:analysis; D013936:Thymidine / Q000097:blood; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D009711:Nucleotides; D003561:Cytarabine; D013936:Thymidine