Determination and pharmacokinetic study of indirubin in rat plasma by high-performance liquid chromatography.

A specific, simple and sensitive HPLC method with UV detection was developed and validated for the pharmacokinetic studies of indirubin in rat plasma for the first time. Indirubin, with osthole as the internal standard, was extracted from plasma samples by liquid-liquid extraction. Chromatographic separation was conducted on a reverse-phase ODS column (200 mm x 4.6 mm, i.d., 5 microm), using a mixture of methanol-water (75:25, v/v) as the mobile phase at a flow rate of 1.0 ml/min with UV detection at 289 nm. The calibration curve of indirubin was linear over the range of 6.5-1950 ng/ml in rat plasma. The lower limit of quantification (LLOQ) was found to be 6.5 ng/ml. The present method was successfully applied for estimating the pharmacokinetic parameters of indirubin following intravenous and intraperitoneal administration of indirubin to rats.