A Narrative Review of Chromatographic Bioanalytical Methods for Quantifying Everolimus in Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Applications.

BACKGROUND

Methods for measuring drug levels in the body are crucial for improving therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) and personalized medicine. In solid-organ transplants, TDM is essential for the management of immunosuppressive drugs to avoid toxicity and organ rejection. Everolimus is a commonly used immunosuppressant with a small range of safe doses; therefore, it is important to adjust the dose according to each patient's needs. Therefore, reliable methods are required to accurately measure everolimus levels. This study aims to conduct a comprehensive and updated narrative review of chromatographic bioanalytical methods for everolimus quantification.

METHODS

The authors searched for original research articles published between 2013 and 2023 in Scopus and PubMed and found 295 articles after removing duplicates. Based on their titles and summaries, 30 articles were selected for a detailed review and 25 articles were included in the final analysis.

RESULTS

Among the 25 studies, 16 used protein precipitation, mainly with methanol, to prepare the samples, 12 used high-performance liquid chromatography, 11 used ultra-performance liquid chromatography, and 2 used both. Almost all the studies (24 of 25) used tandem mass spectrometry for detection, whereas only 1 used ultraviolet.

CONCLUSIONS

This comprehensive review of bioanalytical methods for measuring everolimus using chromatography is a useful resource for researchers developing bioanalytical methods for TDM applications. Future trends in everolimus measurement include achieving lower detection limits, owing to the trend of reducing drug doses in therapy by improving sample extraction techniques and using more sensitive methods.