Tetramethyl-terephthalate (TMT) is the constitutive linker of the flexible porous iron(III) carboxylate Metal Organic Framework (MOF) MIL-88B_4CH₃ based drug nanocarrier (MIL stands for Material from Institut Lavoisier). A method for the determination of the concentration of tetramethyl-terephthalic acid has been developed in different biological rat matrices (liver, spleen and urine) using a liquid-liquid phase extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled to photodiode array detection with 4-aminosalicylic acid as internal standard. The extraction conditions of TMT have been varied from urine to tissue depending on the complexity of the biological matrices. The chromatographic separation was performed with a gradient elution. In all matrices, the limits of detection and quantification of TMT was 0.01 and 0.05 μg ml⁻¹, respectively. The recovery of the TMT reached 86, 89 and 97% for urine, spleen and liver tissues, respectively. The linearity of the calibration curves in urine and tissues was satisfactory in all cases as evidenced by correlation coefficients >0.990. The within-day and between-day precisions were <15% (n=6) and the accuracy ranged in all cases between 86 and 103%. This method has finally allowed the quantification of TMT in rat urine and in tissue samples of rats administered intravenously with iron(III) tetramethyltherepthalate MIL-88B_4CH₃ nanoparticles.
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