An isocratic RP-HPLC method has been developed for the separation and determination of methocarbamol (MTL), indomethacin (IND), and betamethasone (BET) in combined dosage form using an Inertsil ODS-3v C18 (250 × 4.6 mm, 5 μm) column with UV- detection at 235 nm. Experimental design using Box-Behnken design (BBD) was applied to study the response surface during method optimization and to achieve a good separation with a minimum number of experimental runs. The three independent parameters were pH of buffer, % of acetonitrile and flow rate of the mobile phase while the peak resolution of IND from MTL and the peak resolution of BET from IND (R2) were taken as responses to obtain mathematical models. The composite desirability was employed to optimize a set of responses overall (peak resolutions). The predicted optimum assay conditions include a mobile phase composition of acetonitrile and phosphate buffer (pH 5.95) in a ratio of 79:21,v/v, pumped at a flow rate of 1.4 mL min⁻¹. With this ideal condition, the optimized method was able to achieve baseline separation of the three drugs with good resolution and a total run time of less than 7 min. The linearity of MTL, IND, and BET was determined in the concentration ranges of 5–600 µg mL^− 1, 5–300 µg mL^− 1, and 5–300 µg mL^− 1and the regression coefficients were 0.9994, 0.9998, and 0.9998, respectively. The average percent recoveries for the accuracy were determined to be 100.41 ± 0.60%, 100.86 ± 0.86%, and 100.99 ± 0.65% for MTL, IND, and BET, respectively. The R.S.D.% of the intra-day precision was found to be less than 1%, while the R.S.D.% of the inter-day precision was found to be less than 2%. The RP-HPLC method was fully validated with regard to linearity, accuracy, precision, specificity, and robustness as per ICH recommendations. The proposed method has various applications in quality control and routine analysis of the investigated drugs in their pharmaceutical dosage forms and laboratory-prepared mixtures with the goal of reducing laboratory waste, analysis time, and effort.

Introduction: Worrying levels of bacterial resistance have been reported worldwide involving the failure of many available antibiotic treatments. Multidrug resistance (MDR) in Gram-negative bacteria is often ascribed to the presence of multiple and different resistance mechanisms in the same strain. RND efflux pumps play a major role and are an attractive target to discover new antibacterial drugs. Areas covered: This review discusses the prevalence of efflux pumps, their overexpression in clinical scenarios, their polyselectivity, their effect on the intracellular concentrations of various antibiotics associated with the alteration of the membrane permeability and their involvement in pathogenicity are discussed. Expert opinion: Efflux pumps are new targets for the development of adjuvant in antibiotic treatments by of efflux pump inhibition. They may allow us to rejuvenate old antibiotics acting on their concentration inside the bacteria and thus potentiating their activity while blocking the release of virulence factors. It is a pharmacodynamic challenge to finalize new combined therapy.

Generally, tyrosine kinase inhibitors have narrow therapeutic window and large interpatient variability compared to intrapatient variability. In order to support its therapeutic drug monitoring, two fast and accurate methods were developed for the determination of recently FDA approved anticancer tyrosine kinase inhibitors, afatinib and ibrutinib, in human plasma using ultra high performance liquid chromatography coupled to PDA detection. Diclofenac sodium was used as internal standard. The chromatographic separation was achieved on an Acquity UPLC BEH C18 analytical column using a mobile phase combining ammonium formate buffer and acetonitrile at a constant flow rate of 0.4 mL/min using gradient elution mode. AµSPE (solid phase extraction) procedure, using Oasis MCXµElution plates, was processed and it gave satisfying and reproducible results in terms of extraction yields. Additionally, the methods were successfully validated using the accuracy profiles approach (β= 95% and acceptance limits = ±15%) over the ranges 5–250 ng/mL for afatinib and from 5 to 400 ng/mL for ibrutinib in human plasma.