Doxorubicin Drug Analysis

Drug profile of doxorubicin

Doxorubicin (DOX) also known as Adriamycin is categorized as anthracycline antiobiotic. It was first extracted from Streptomyces peucetius var. caesius by aerobic fermentation followed by solvent extraction and purification by chromatography in 1970s. It is also extracted from Streptomyces coeruleorubidus or chemically synthesized from daunomycin (its natural analog). DOX differes from daunorubicin only by a single OH group (Arcamone et al., 1972). DOX is a broad spectrum anti-cancer drug having excellent efficacy in malignant lymphoma, pulmonary cancer, digestive and mammary cancer, ovarian carcinoma, transitional cell bladder carcinoma, thyroid carcinoma, gastric carcinoma and Hodgkin's disease (Johdo et al., 2003). DOX inhibits both the isoforms of topoisomerase II (Topo II)

The characteristic feature with DOXh therapy is the appearance of red color of urine within the first hours to days after administration. Studies carried out by (Yesair et al., 1972), 10-20% of the drug is excreted from feces within 24 hrs while next 40-50% is excreted within 7 days. For pegylated liposomal DOXh (Doxil® or Caelyx®), most of the drug is cleared with an elimination half-life of 20–30 hours (Gabizon et al.,

Spectrophotometric techniques

UV spectrophotometric estimation of DOX is possible due to the presence of polyhydroxyanthraquinone chromophoric group on the 7,8,9,10-tetrahydronaphthacene skeleton. The drug when dissolved in ethanol (95%) shows characteristic peaks at 234 nm, 252 nm, 288 nm, 475 nm and at 530 nm (I.P 2014). Cia and coworkers reported the estimation of entrapment efficiency and drug loading capacity of polybutylcyanoacrylate magnetic loaded DOX nanoparticles (Cai et al., 2009).

2.10.2. Chromatographic