ABSTRACT
The endemicity of the pandemic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection proved to be transitional only. Spikes are forming again in 2023, and high expectations are returning for reinfections and viral mutations. Molnupiravir (MOL) has been approved as an oral antiviral drug for the treatment of the COVID-19 causative virion. Therefore, the development of an ultrasensitive, instantaneous, and cost-effective method for the quantification of MOL in real plasma samples and formulated dosage form are mandatory. The proposed approach is based on the synthesis of a MOL metal-chelation product. MOL as a ligand was chelated with 1.0 mM zinc(II) in an acetate buffer (pH 5.3). After illumination at 340 nm, the intensity of the MOL fluorescence measured at 386 nm was increased by about 10-fold. The linearity range was found to be from 60.0 to 800.0 ng mL-1 with limit of quantitation (LOQ) of 28.6 ng mL-1 . Two methods were utilized for measuring the greenness of the proposed method (Green Analytical Procedure Index [GAPI] and analytical greenness metric [AGREE] methods), with results equal to 0.8. The binding stoichiometry of MOL with the zinc(II) ion was found to be 2:1. All the experimental parameters were optimized and validated using International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) and United States Food and Drug Administration (US-FDA) recommendations. Furthermore, the fluorescent probes were successfully utilized in real human plasma with high percentages of recovery (95.6%-97.1%) without any matrix interferences. The mechanism of fluorescent complex formation was confirmed using 1 H NMR in the presence and absence of Zn(II). The method was further utilized for testing content uniformity of MOL in its marketed capsule dosage forms.