Liquid chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry in combination with online hydrogen/deuterium exchange technique for structural elucidation of phase I metabolites of iso-phenylcyclopentylamine in rat bile.

MS/MS experiment and accurate mass measurement are powerful tools in metabolite identification. However, sometimes these data do not provide enough information to assign an unambiguous structure to a metabolite. In combination with MS techniques, hydrogen/deuterium (H/D) exchange can provide additional information for structural elucidation by determination of the number of exchangeable hydrogen atoms in a structure. In this study, the principal phase I metabolites of iso-phenylcyclopentylamine in rat bile were identified by high-performance liquid chromatography with electrospray ionization quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (ESI-Q-TOF-MS). Since N-oxidation may occur because of the existence of the primary amino group in the structure, it was difficult to differentiate the hydroxylated metabolites from N-oxides by ESI-Q-TOF-MS alone. Therefore, online H/D exchange technique was applied to solve this problem. Finally, 25 phase I metabolites were detected and structurally described, in which 11 were confirmed to be N-oxides. This study demonstrated the effectiveness of high-resolution mass spectrometry in combination with an online H/D exchange technique in rapid identification of drug metabolites, especially in discriminating hydroxylated metabolites from N-oxides.