Document Type

Article

Version Deposited

Published Version

Open Access Funding Source

Open Access Publishing Fund

Publication Date

8-13-2022

Publication Title

Separations

DOI

10.3390/separations9080218

Abstract

Artemisinin (ART) is a sesquiterpene lactone and a popular malaria drug used in many parts of the world. Artesunate (ARTS) is a semi-synthetic derivative of ART with improved pharmacokinetic properties. However, the half-life of ARTS is less than an hour in vivo. The analysis of this drug in vitro in different solvent systems using LC-MS/TOF showed a solvent-driven breakdown. ARTS breakdown formed several derivatives, including dihydroartemisinin (DHA), artemether (ARTM) and DHA-dimer among others, at different rates in different solvent composition systems. The change in temperature from room temperature to physiological temperature (37 °C) was found to enhance the rate of the ARTS breakdown. In methanol, ARTS mainly formed ARTM with a chromatographic peak decrease of about 3.13%, while methanol and water (90:10) v/v mainly gave rise to DHA and ARTM with about an 80% chromatographic peak decrease. On the other hand, ARTS in methanol and ammonium acetate (85:15) v/v formed DHA, ARTM, DHA-dimer and other reaction peaks with about a 97% peak decrease and the formation of an orange solution pointing to a molecular re-arrangement reaction. These results have an important bearing on research on the analysis of artemisinin drugs conducted on these common solvents.

Comments

Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Open Access license made possible by the Rowan University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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