Role of Modeling and Simulation in Preclinical and Clinical Long-Acting Injectable Drug Development.

Innovations in the field of long-acting injectable drug development are increasingly being reported. More advanced in vitro and in vivo characterization can improve our understanding of the injection space and aid in describing the long-acting injectable (LAI) drug's behavior at the injection site more mechanistically. These innovations may enable unlocking the potential of employing a model-based framework in the LAI preclinical and clinical space. This review provides a brief overview of the LAI development process before delving deeper into the current status of modeling and simulation approaches in characterizing the preclinical and clinical LAI pharmacokinetics, focused on aqueous crystalline suspensions. A closer look is provided on in vitro release methods, available biopharmaceutical models and reported in vitro/in vivo correlations (IVIVCs) that may advance LAI drug development. The overview allows identifying the opportunities for use of model-informed drug development approaches and potential gaps where further research may be most warranted. Continued investment in improving our understanding of LAI PK across species through translational approaches may facilitate the future development of LAI drug products.

Current State and Opportunities with Long-acting Injectables: Industry Perspectives from the Innovation and Quality Consortium "Long-Acting Injectables" Working Group.

Long-acting injectable (LAI) formulations can provide several advantages over the more traditional oral formulation as drug product opportunities. LAI formulations can achieve sustained drug release for extended periods of time, which results in less frequent dosing requirements leading to higher patient adherence and more optimal therapeutic outcomes. This review article will provide an industry perspective on the development and associated challenges of long-acting injectable formulations. The LAIs described herein include polymer-based formulations, oil-based formulations, and crystalline drug suspensions. The review discusses manufacturing processes, including quality controls, considerations of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API), biopharmaceutical properties and clinical requirements pertaining to LAI technology selection, and characterization of LAIs through in vitro, in vivo and in silico approaches. Lastly, the article includes a discussion around the current lack of suitable compendial and biorelevant in vitro models for the evaluation of LAIs and its subsequent impact on LAI product development and approval.

Synthetic Pept-Ins as a Generic Amyloid-Like Aggregation-Based Platform for In Vivo PET Imaging of Intracellular Targets.

Amyloid-like aggregation of proteins is induced by short amyloidogenic sequence segments within a specific protein sequence resulting in self-assembly into ß-sheets. We recently validated a technology platform in which synthetic amyloid peptides ("Pept-ins") containing a specific aggregation-prone region (APR) are used to induce specific functional knockdown of the target protein from which the APR was derived, including bacterial, viral, and mammalian cell proteins. In this work, we investigated if Pept-ins can be used as vector probes for in vivo Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging of intracellular targets. The radiolabeled Pept-ins [68Ga]Ga-NODAGA-PEG4-vascin (targeting VEGFR2) and [68Ga]Ga-NODAGA-PEG2-P2 (targeting E. coli) were evaluated as PET probes. The Pept-in based radiotracers were cross-validated in a murine tumor and muscle infection model, respectively, and were found to combine target specificity with favorable in vivo pharmacokinetics. When the amyloidogenicity of the interacting region of the peptide is suppressed by mutation, cellular uptake and in vivo accumulation are abolished, highlighting the importance of the specific design of synthetic Pept-ins. The ubiquity of target-specific amyloidogenic sequence segments in natural proteins, the straightforward sequence-based design of the Pept-in probes, and their spontaneous internalization by cells suggest that Pept-ins may constitute a generic platform for in vivo PET imaging of intracellular targets.

Reverse engineering synthetic antiviral amyloids.

Human amyloids have been shown to interact with viruses and interfere with viral replication. Based on this observation, we employed a synthetic biology approach in which we engineered virus-specific amyloids against influenza A and Zika proteins. Each amyloid shares a homologous aggregation-prone fragment with a specific viral target protein. For influenza we demonstrate that a designer amyloid against PB2 accumulates in influenza A-infected tissue in vivo. Moreover, this amyloid acts specifically against influenza A and its common PB2 polymorphisms, but not influenza B, which lacks the homologous fragment. Our model amyloid demonstrates that the sequence specificity of amyloid interactions has the capacity to tune amyloid-virus interactions while allowing for the flexibility to maintain activity on evolutionary diverging variants.

Evaluation of [11C]NMS-E973 as a PET tracer for in vivo visualisation of HSP90.

Heat shock protein 90 is an ATP-dependent molecular chaperone important for folding, maturation and clearance of aberrantly expressed proteins and is abundantly expressed (1-2% of all proteins) in the cytosol of all normal cells. In some tumour cells, however, strong expression of HSP90 is also observed on the cell membrane and in the extracellular matrix and the affinity of tumoural HSP90 for ATP domain inhibitors was reported to increase over 100-fold compared to that of HSP90 in normal cells. Here, we explore [11C]NMS-E973 as a PET tracer for in vivo visualisation of HSP90 and as a potential tool for in vivo quantification of occupancy of HSP90 inhibitors. Methods: HSP90 expression was biochemically characterized in a panel of established cell lines including the melanoma line B16.F10. B16.F10 melanoma xenograft tumour tissue was compared to non-malignant mouse tissue. NMS-E973 was tested in vitro for HSP90 inhibitory activity in several tumour cell lines. HSP90-specific binding of [11C]NMS-E973 was evaluated in B16.F10 melanoma cells and B16.F10 melanoma, prostate cancer LNCaP and PC3, SKOV-3 xenograft tumour slices and in vivo in a B16.F10 melanoma mouse model. Results: Strong intracellular upregulation and abundant membrane localisation of HSP90 was observed in the different tumour cell lines, in the B16.F10 tumour cell line and in B16.F10 xenograft tumours compared to non-malignant tissue. NMS-E973 showed HSP90-specific inhibition and reduced proliferation of cells. [11C]NMS-E973 showed strong binding to B16.F10 melanoma cells, which was inhibited by 200 µM of PU-H71, a non-structurally related HSP90 inhibitor. HSP90-specific binding was observed by in vitro autoradiography of murine B16.F10 melanoma, LNCaP and PC3 prostate cancer and SKOV-3 ovary carcinoma tissue slices. Further, B16.F10 melanoma-inoculated mice were subjected to a µPET study, where the tracer showed fast and persistent tumour uptake. Pretreatment of B16.F10 melanoma mice with PU-H71 or Ganetespib (50 mg/kg) completely blocked tumour accumulation of [11C]NMS-E973 and confirmed in vivo HSP90 binding specificity. HSP90-specific binding of [11C]NMS-E973 was observed in blood, lungs and spleen of tumour-bearing animals but not in control animals. Conclusion: [11C]NMS-E973 is a PET tracer for in vivo visualisation of tumour HSP90 expression and can potentially be used for quantification of HSP90 occupancy. Further translational evaluation of [11C]NMS-E973 is warranted.

De novo design of a biologically active amyloid.

Most human proteins possess amyloidogenic segments, but only about 30 are associated with amyloid-associated pathologies, and it remains unclear what determines amyloid toxicity. We designed vascin, a synthetic amyloid peptide, based on an amyloidogenic fragment of vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 (VEGFR2), a protein that is not associated to amyloidosis. Vascin recapitulates key biophysical and biochemical characteristics of natural amyloids, penetrates cells, and seeds the aggregation of VEGFR2 through direct interaction. We found that amyloid toxicity is observed only in cells that both express VEGFR2 and are dependent on VEGFR2 activity for survival. Thus, amyloid toxicity here appears to be both protein-specific and conditional-determined by VEGFR2 loss of function in a biological context in which target protein function is essential.