A simple and rapid liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometric (LC-MS/MS) assay method has been developed and validated for quantification of protease inhibitor atazanavir in rabbit plasma. Saquinavir was used as an internal standard. The analytes were extracted from rabbit plasma samples by solid-phase extraction technique using Orpheus C18 extraction cartridges. The reconstituted samples were chromatographed on a C18 column by using 85:15 (v/v) mixture of methanol and 5 mM ammonium acetate as the mobile phase at a flow rate of 0.9 ml/min. The calibration curves obtained were linear (r2 0.99) over the concentration range 50.5 - 5995.2 ng/ml. The results of the intra and inter-day precision and accuracy studies were well within the acceptable limits. The proposed method was found to be applicable to pharmacokinetic studies.
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