A Simple, Reliable, Rapid and Stability Indicating Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatographic Method for the Quantitation of Emtricitabine

A novel, simple, rapid and stability-indicating reversed-phase ultra performance liquid chromatographic method was developed and subsequently validated for quantitation of Emtricitabine (ECB) from drug substance matrix. The separation was achieved in less than 2.0 minutes on Waters ACQUITY UPLC BEH C18 (50 x 2.1) mm, 1.7µm column in isocratic mode with flow rate 0.25 mL/min. Mobile phase used was 0.015 M potassium dihydrogen phosphate buffer pH 2.2 and acetonitrile in ratio 75:25 v/v. Detection was carried out at the maximum wavelength of 284 nm using a photodiode array detector. The retention time of emtricitabine was 1.2 minutes. A forced degradation study was performed. Specificity of the method was established on drug substance by hydrolytic and oxidative stress conditions. Validation of analytical method was carried out as per the current ICH guidelines for linearity, recovery, precision, limit of detection, limit of quantification and robustness parameters.