Spectrophotometric and spectrodensitometric quantification of a new antiviral combination

Accurate, simple, and selective spectrophotometric and spectrodensitometric methods were developed and adopted to quantify velpatasvir (VPS) and sofosbuvir (SFV) concurrently in their pure forms and tablets. The spectrophotometric technique was based on the first derivative of ratio spectra (¹DD) technique and developed to determine VPS and SFV simultaneously in table formulation. However, the spectrodensitometric technique was based on thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and densitometry and developed to determine VPS and SFV simultaneously in tablet dosage form. Chromatographic separation was performed using chloroform:methanol 9.5:0.5 (%, v/v) as the mobile phase on glass-coated TLC plates. Detection was achieved using a 265-nm deuterium lamp in absorbance mode. Both analytical methods were validated according to the International Conference on Harmonization (ICH)-Q2B guidelines. The linearity in the range of concentration ranges of 1–50 μg/mL and 5–80 μg/mL were obtained for VPS and SFV, respectively, using ¹DD spectrometric method. However, the linearity in the range of 5–50 and 10–70 μg/band for VPS and SFV, respectively, were recorded using TLC–densitometric method. Accuracy was recorded ˃100% for VPS and SFV using both methods. This is the first TLC–densitometry method that can separate and quantify the studied mixture of the drugs. The proposed analytical methods were found to be accurate, precise, selective, robust and sensitive for simultaneous analysis of VPS and SFV in tablet dosage forms.