Recent Advances in Therapeutic Applications of Bisbenzimidazoles.

Nitrogen-containing heterocycles are one of the most common structural motifs in approximately 80% of the marketed drugs. Of these, benzimidazoles analogues are known to elicit a wide spectrum of pharmaceutical activities such as anticancer, antibacterial, antiparasitic, antiviral, antifungal as well as chemosensor effect. Based on the benzimidazole core fused heterocyclic compounds, crescent-shaped bisbenzimidazoles were developed which provided an early breakthrough in the sequence-specific DNA recognition. Over the years, a number of functional variations in the bisbenzimidazole core have led to the emergence of their unique properties and established them as versatile ligands against several classes of pathogens. The present review provides an overview of diverse pharmacological activities of the bisbenzimidazole analogues in the past decade with a brief account of its development through the years.

Highly Sensitive LC-MS-MS Method for the Determination of Tacrine in Rat Plasma: Application to Pharmacokinetic Studies in Rats.

A rapid and highly sensitive assay method has been developed and validated for the estimation of tacrine in rat plasma using liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry with electrospray ionization in the positive-ion mode. The assay procedure involves a simple liquid-liquid extraction of tacrine and phenacetin (internal standard, IS) from rat plasma using ethyl acetate. Chromatographic separation was achieved with 0.2% formic acid : acetonitrile (30 : 70, v/v) at a flow rate of 0.50 mL/min on an Atlantis dC18 column with a total run time of 3.0 min. The MS-MS ion transitions monitored were 199.10 → 171.20 for tacrine and 180.10 → 110.10 for IS. Method validation was performed as per United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) guidelines and the results met the acceptance criteria. The lower limit of quantification achieved was 0.008 ng/mL and linearity was observed from 0.008 to 53.4 ng/mL. The intra- and inter-day precision was in the range of 2.76-12.5 and 5.15-12.8%, respectively. This novel method has been applied to a pharmacokinetic study in rats.