Rapid and comprehensive impurity profiling of synthetic thyroxine by ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography-high-resolution mass spectrometry.

Rapid and efficient quality control according to the public authority regulations is mandatory to guarantee safety of the pharmaceuticals and to save resources in the pharmaceutical industry. In the case of so-called "grandfather products" like the synthetic thyroid hormone thyroxine, strict regulations enforce a detailed chemical analysis in order to characterize potentially toxic or pharmacologically relevant impurities. We report a straightforward workflow for the comprehensive impurity profiling of synthetic thyroid hormones and impurities employing ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) hyphenated to high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS).

Detection of low-abundance impurities in synthetic thyroid hormones by stationary phase optimized liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry.

The transfer of a gradient method to an isocratic or multistep gradient method employing stationary phase optimized liquid chromatography facilitated a reduction in analysis time by 50% and significantly improved the mass spectrometric detectability of impurities in synthetic thyroid hormones. Four column segments packed with different stationary phases were combined into a single chromatographic column, which allowed the separation and photometric as well as mass spectrometric detection of thyroid compounds in less than 30 min under isocratic- or step gradient elution conditions with 0.10% acetic acid/acetonitrile.