A novel, sensitive, selective and stability indicating LC-UV method was developed for the determination of potential impurities of eslicarbazepine acetate. High performance liquid chromatographic investigation of eslicarbazepine acetate laboratory sample revealed the presence of several impurities. Three impurities were characterized rapidly and four impurities were found to be unknown. The unknown impurities were identified by liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization, ion trap mass spectrometry (LC/ESI-IT/MS/MS). Structural confirmation of these impurities was unambiguously carried out by synthesis followed by characterization using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and mass spectrometry (MS). Based on the spectroscopic, spectrometric and elemental analysis data unknown impurities were characterized as 5-acetyl-5,11-dihydro-10H-dibenzo [b,f]azepin-10-one, N-acetyl-5H-dibenzo[b,f]azepine-5-carboxamide, 5-acetyl-10,11-dihydro-5H-dibenzo[b,f]azepin-10-yl acetate and 5-acetyl-5H-dibenzo[b,f]azepin-10-yl acetate. The newly developed LC-UV method was validated according to ICH guidelines considering eleven potential impurities and four new impurities to demonstrate specificity, precision, linearity, accuracy and stability indicating nature of the method. The newly developed method was found to be highly efficient, selective, sensitive and stability indicating. A plausible pathway for the formation of four new impurities is proposed.
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