Simultaneous separation and determination of vancomycin and its crystalline degradation products in human serum by ultra high performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method and its application in therapeutic drug monitoring

A rapid and simple ultra high performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry method was developed and validated for the simultaneous separation and determination of vancomycin and its crystalline degradation products in human serum. Vancomycin and two isomers of the degradants were extracted from human serum with a protein precipitation method. The compounds were separated on an Acquity BEH C18 column (2.1 × 50 mm, 1.7 μm) eluted with a gradient mixture of acetonitrile and 0.1% formic acid as the mobile phase. Norvancomycin was used as the internal standard. The linear ranges of vancomycin and two degradant isomers were 1.057-105.7, 0.1437-14.37, and 0.2540-25.40 μg/mL, respectively. The established methods were validated and successfully applied to a therapeutic drug monitoring study of vancomycin in patients with renal insufficiency.