High performance liquid chromatographic determination of platinum in blood and urine samples of cancer patients after administration of cisplatin drug using solvent extraction and N,N'-bis(salicylidene)-1,2-propanediamine as complexation reagent.

A high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) procedure has been developed for the determination of cisplatin, based on the pre-column derivation of platinum(II) with reagent N,N'-bis(salicylidene)-1,2-propanediamine (H2SA2pn). The neutral platinum complex was extracted, concentrated in an organic solvent and then injected (5 microl) on a reverse phase HPLC column, Varian Micro-Pak SP C-18, 5 microm (150 mm x 4.0 mm i.d.). The complex was eluted isocratically using a ternary mixture of methanol/acetonitrile/water (40/30/30, v/v/v) at a flow rate of 1.0 ml/min and was determined by a UV detector set at 254 nm after elution. A detection limit was found to be 4.0 ng per injection. The amounts of platinum in blood serum and urine of cancer patients after administration of cisplatin were observed in a range of 221-298 ng/ml and 43-97 ng/ml with relative standard deviation (R.S.D.) of 3.6-4.6% and 3.5-4.8%, respectively. Preliminary metabolism profiles of Pt concentrations in blood and urine from the patients were established.