Simultaneous kinetic–spectrophotometric determination of mycophenolate mofetil and mycophenolic acid based on complexation with Fe(III) using chemometric techniques

Determination of pharmaceutical analytes has been subjected to many investigations, especially in transplantations in which accurate and precise detection of drugs is of importance. In this study, a simple and fast complexation reaction has been employed for simultaneous kinetic–spectrophotometric determination of two immunosuppressant drugs, mycophenolate mofetil and its active metabolite mycophenolic acid, which is based on the reaction between drugs and Fe(III) ions in the presence of sodium dodecyl sulfate as anionic surfactant by standard addition method. The effect of influential parameters including type of surfactant, concentration of Fe(III) ions and pH of the solution on the complexation reaction has been studied, and SDS was chosen as suitable surfactant, while reaction proceeds with 0.1 M Fe(III) at pH 4. Multivariate curve resolution-alternating least squares has been employed for analyzing the multiset data obtained from augmentation of resulting standard addition matrices. Values for limit of detection of method have been calculated as 4.88 and 1.62 µg mL−1 for mycophenolic acid and mycophenolate mofetil, respectively, and Beer’s law is obeyed over the concentration ranges 10–200 µg mL−1 for MPM and 50–250 µg mL−1 for MPA. The proposed method was successfully applied for determination of drugs in plasma serum samples. The accuracy and reliability of the method was further ascertained by recovery studies via standard addition procedure.