Modern Assay Techniques for Cancer Drugs: Electroanalytical and Liquid Chromatography Methods

Crit Rev Anal Chem. 2019;49(4):306-323. doi: 10.1080/10408347.2018.1527206. Epub 2018 Dec 29.

Abstract

In the past decades, patients who have chemotherapy treatment have considerably increased number. At this point, the development of rapid precise, and reliable methods are very important to analyze cancer drugs from their dosage forms, animals or human biological samples. Among all the analytical methods, electrochemical methods hold an important position with their unique properties such as specificity in the biological recognition process, fast response, and their reliability and do not need a pretreatment process. Chromatographic methods are also used in a wide range of analytical applications for the analyses of anticancer drugs. The power of chromatography comes from its ability to separate a mixture of analytes and determination of their concentrations. Chromatographic techniques can mainly be divided into gas, liquid, and supercritical fluid chromatography. In the frame of this information, this review is aimed to provide basic principles of electroanalytical and high-performance liquid chromatography methods for the analysis of cancer drugs. In addition, some selected applications for electrochemistry-related techniques and high-performance liquid chromatography, for the determination of anti-cancer pharmaceuticals published in the last five years are also discussed.

Keywords: Electrochemistry; analytical chemistry; cancer drugs; liquid chromatography.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Antineoplastic Agents / analysis*
  • Chromatography, Liquid
  • Humans

Substances

  • Antineoplastic Agents