Liquid chromatographic methods for determination of the new antiepileptic drugs stiripentol, retigabine, rufinamide and perampanel: A comprehensive and critical review

The new antiepileptic drugs perampanel,retigabine,rufinamide and stiripentol have been recently approved for different epilepsy types.Being them an innovation in the antiepileptics armamentarium,a lot of investigations regarding their pharmacological properties are yet to be performed.Besides,considering their broad anticonvulsant activities,an extension of their therapeutic indications may be worthy of investigation,especially regarding other seizure types as well as other central nervous system disorders.Although different liquid chromatographic(LC)methods coupled with ultraviolet,fluorescence,mass or tandem-mass spectrometry detection have already been developed for the determination of perampanel,retigabine,rufinamide and stiripentol,new and more cost-effective methods are yet required.Therefore,this review summarizes the main analytical aspects regarding the liquid chromatographic methods developed for the analysis of perampanel,retigabine(and its main active metabolite),rufinamide and stiripentol in biological samples and pharmaceutical dosage forms.Furthermore,the physicochemical and stability properties of the target compounds will also be addressed.Thus,this review gathers,for the first time,important background information on LC methods that have been developed and applied for the determination of perampanel,retigabine,rufinamide and stiripentol,which should be considered as a starting point if new(bio)analytical techniques are aimed to be implemented for these drugs.

A different vision of translational research in biomarker discovery: a pilot study on circulatory mitochondrial proteins as Parkinson’s disease potential biomarkers

Background The identification of circulating biomarkers that closely correlate with Parkinson’s Disease(PD)has failed several times in the past.Nevertheless,in this pilot study,a translational approach was conducted,allowing the evaluation of the plasma levels of two mitochondrial-related proteins,whose combination leads to a robust model with potential diagnostic value to discriminate the PD patients from matched controls.Methods The proposed translational approach was initiated by the analysis of secretomes from cells cultured under control or well-defined oxidative stress conditions,followed by the identification of proteins related to PD pathologic mechanisms that were altered between the two states.This pipeline was further translated into the analysis of undepleted plasma samples from 28 control and 31 PD patients.Results From the secretome analysis,several mitochondria-related proteins were found to be differentially released between control and stress conditions and to be able to distinguish the two secretomes.Similarly,two mitochondrial-related proteins were found to be significantly changed in a PD cohort compared to matched controls.Moreover,a linear discriminant model with potential diagnostic value to discriminate PD patients was obtained using the combination of these two proteins.Both proteins are associated with apoptotic mitochondrial changes,which may correspond to potential indicators of cell death.Moreover,one of these proteins,the VPS35 protein,was reported in plasma for the first time,and its quantification was only possible due to its previous identification in the secretome analysis.Conclusions In this work,an adaptation of a translational pipeline for biomarker selection was presented and transposed to neurological diseases,in the present case Parkinson’s Disease.The novelty and success of this pilot study may arise from the combination of:i)a translational research pipeline,where plasma samples are interrogated using knowledge previously obtained from the evaluation of cells’secretome under oxidative stress;ii)the combined used of statistical analysis and an informed selection of candidates based on their link with relevant disease mechanisms,and iii)the use of SWATH-MS,an untargeted MS method that allows a complete record of the analyzed samples and a targeted data extraction of the quantitative values of proteins previously identified.