We describe the development and validation of a HPLC-MS/MS method to assess the pharmacokinetics and tumor distribution of fenretinide, a synthetic retinoid chemically related to all-trans-retinoic acid, after administration of a novel oral nanoformulation of fenretinide, called bionanofenretinide (BNF). BNF was developed to overcome the major limitation of fenretinide: its poor aqueous solubility and bioavailability due to its hydrophobic nature. The method proved to be reproducible, precise and highly accurate for the measurement of the drug and the main metabolites. The lower limit of quantification resulted in 1 ng/mL. The curve range of 1-500 ng/mL and 50-2000 ng/mL, for plasma and tumor homogenate, respectively, was appropriate for the analysis, as demonstrated by the accuracy of between 96.8% and 102.4% for plasma and 96.6 to 102.3% for the tumor. The interdays precision and accuracy determined on quality controls at three different levels were in the ranges of 6.9 to 7.5% and 99.3 to 101.0%, and 0.96 to 1.91% and 102.3 to 105.8% for plasma and tumor, respectively. With the application of the novel assay in explorative pharmacokinetic studies, following acute and chronic oral administration of the nanoformulation, fenretinide was detected in plasma and tumor tissue at a concentration higher than the IC50 value necessary for in vitro inhibitory activity (i.e., 1-5 µM) in different cancer cells lines. We were also able to detect the presence in plasma and tumor of active and inactive metabolites of fenretinide.
Keywords: 4-HPR; analytical chemistry; fenretinide; oral formulation; pharmacokinetics; tumor distribution.