In vitro-in vivo extrapolation of hepatic clearance involving active uptake: theoretical and experimental aspects.

The importance of hepatic uptake transporters in drug clearance is well recognized. The subject is reviewed with the intention of providing an overview of the concepts in order to link the increasing knowledge of transporter-mediated uptake into established models of hepatic clearance. In order to understand and quantify their impact, models of hepatic elimination that incorporate permeability barriers are required. Models that include both active and passive uptake into hepatocytes are discussed and simulations of the influence of active uptake and passive diffusion on hepatic clearance are presented. The advantages and weaknesses of a number of in vitro assays of hepatic uptake are described, and their ability to predict hepatic clearance is reviewed.

Robust assessment of statistical significance in the use of unbound/intrinsic pharmacokinetic parameters in quantitative structure-pharmacokinetic relationships with lipophilicity.

The optimization of pharmacokinetic properties remains one of the most challenging aspects of drug design. Key parameters, clearance and volume of distribution, are multifactorial, which makes deriving structure-pharmacokinetic relationships difficult. The correction of clearance and volume of distribution for the unbound fraction in plasma is one approach taken that has enabled quantitative structure-pharmacokinetic relationships to be derived. Three published data-sets where unbound parameters have been correlated with lipophilicity have been reanalyzed. The reanalysis has shown that high correlation coefficients can be achieved without any true correlation in the data and can lead to misinterpretation of the ways in which lipophilicity influences pharmacokinetics. Randomization procedures are proposed as a more robust method of assessing significance.

Drug-phospholipid interactions. 2. Predicting the sites of drug distribution using n-octanol/water and membrane/water distribution coefficients.

The in vivo tissue distribution of seventeen drugs has been modeled by using estimated n-octanol/water and membrane/water distribution coefficients. In this study, the membrane affinities are estimated using the new technique of immobilized artificial membrane (IAM) column chromatography. delta (log D(n-octanol/water-membrane/water)), which measures a hypothetical equilibrium of the drug between of n-octanol and membrane phase, is a better model of in vivo tissue distribution, as measured by Adipose Tissue Storage Index (ASI), than either n-octanol/ water or membrane/water distribution coefficients alone. This demonstrates the importance of membrane distribution coefficients as a complementary descriptor of lipophilicity to n-octanol/water distribution coefficients, in modeling in vivo distribution of drugs. This rapid method for predicting in vivo distribution of drugs, based on n-octanol and membrane/water distribution coefficients, may be a useful tool to aid the selection of drugs with beneficial pharmacokinetic profiles.